Fig. 1

Abiotic soil composition of the different succession classes. A) Boxplot of plant-available phosphate content (mg/kg) in soil from the different succession classes tested with type-II ANOVA. Letters indicate significant differences between succession classes based on Tukey HSD. B) PCA biplot of abiotic soil factors distinguishing the different succession classes. Small shapes indicate individual samples, and the large shapes indicate succession class means. Ellipsoids indicate 95% confidence intervals around the succession class mean. Arrows indicate relative contribution of independent soil factors to PC1 and PC2. C) Linear discriminant analysis of abiotic soil factors displaying linear discriminant 1 on the x-axis and normalised density of the variance on y-axis. Dashed lines indicate succession class mean of LD1. MANOVA results are indicated in top of graph *P < 0.05; ** P < 0.01; *** P < 0.001.