Invasive bamboo removal enhances soil multifunctionality via increasing fungal but not bacterial community stability

Removing invasive plants is widely considered an effective approach for restoring invaded ecosystems. While the impacts of such removal on aboveground vegetation have been well-documented, its influences on soil microbial communities and multifunctionality remain poorly characterized, thus hampering a comprehensive assessment of its ecological impacts. Here, we assessed the impacts of removing invasive Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) on soil microbial communities and multifunctionality linked to carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling in a subtropical forest ecosystem, after five years of removal. Our findings revealed that bamboo removal significantly reduced microbial community complexity, altered community composition, and increased saprotrophic fungal diversity, while having minimal effects on bacterial and total fungal diversity. Moreover, the microbial communities in removal plots exhibited greater stability and lower sensitivity to environmental fluctuations. Notably, soil multifunctionality was higher in removal plots compared to both invaded and uninvaded plots. This improvement, although associated with several microbial community attributes, was primarily linked to greater stability in fungal rather than bacterial communities. Structural equation modeling (SEM) further revealed that fungal community stability mediated the linkages between other microbial community attributes and soil multifunctionality. These results underscore the ecological benefits of invasive bamboo removal for forest soil ecosystems and emphasize the fundamental role of microbial community stability in sustaining soil functions and restoring invaded landscapes.