Relationships among wood‐boring beetles, fungi, and the decomposition of forest biomass

A prevailing paradigm in forest ecology is that wood-boring beetles facilitate wood decay and carbon cycling, but empirical tests have yielded mixed results. We experimentally determined the effects of wood borers on fungal community assembly and wood decay within pine trunks in the southeastern United States. Pine trunks were made either beetle-accessible or inaccessible. Fungal communities were compared using culturing and high-throughput...