Restoration age and reintroduced bison may shape soil bacterial communities in restored tallgrass prairies.

Knowledge of how habitat restoration shapes soil microbial communities often is limited despite their critical roles in ecosystem function. Soil community diversity and composition change after restoration, but the trajectory of these successional changes may be influenced by disturbances imposed for habitat management. We studied soil bacterial communities in a restored tallgrass prairie chronosequence for >6 years to document how diversity and composition changed with age, management through fire, and grazing by reintroduced bison, and in comparison to pre-restoration agricultural fields and remnant prairies.