Contrasting effects of two mammalian soil engineers on microbial communities

Little is known about how foraging by bilbies and echidnas might influence soil microbial communities, and specifically, whether their effects are complementary. Herein, we compared microbial community composition of soils within echidna foraging pits with that in bilby pits and related this to the concentrations of enzymes associated with the cycling of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. Because these two animals dig different shaped pits, which differ in their capacity to trap organic matter, we expected to detect a greater relative abundance of bacterial phyla associated with the cycle of carbon and nitrogen in the shallower, organic-rich echidna pits than the deeper but narrower pits of the bilby, which trap less litter.