Fig. 5

Complete and driver microbial co-occurrence networks of the BS and the RSS from the three vegetation belts. a Interactions were inferred from microbial OTU abundances. Each node represents an OTU or grouped taxa, and each edge represents a significant pairwise association between them (gray lines: copresences; red lines: exclusions). The different colors of nodes represent distinct phyla. Node sizes are proportional to the number of connections (degree) of each network (maximum node degree was 63). b In BS- and RSS-driver networks, drivers correspond to the red border diamond nodes. Statistical results of co-occurrence and NetShift networks are shown (number of nodes, edges and positive/negative ratios). c Box plots of the node’s degrees from all the connections, only from the positive connections and from the negative connections of the complete and drivers’ microbial co-occurrence BS and RSS networks. Statistically significant changes are noted as *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 using the Mann‒Whitney U test