> Tropical forests are bacterial, temperate fungal

This seems like an impossible claim to back up but I would absolutely love to read if you have anything that would

It's well-known that in general in the ecological succession of the soil food web, soils "start" out more bacteria dominated (corresponding with nitrogen generally being available more as nitrates and nitrites) and slowly turn to being more fungal dominated (corresponding with nitrogen being generally available more as ammonium or other harder to access forms that generally come along as the food web gets increasingly complex and trophic layers build up)

By "start" up above I of course mean after a disturbance like a fire since we're talking about secondary succession (if we were talking about primary succession we'd be talking volcanoes and lichen turning rocks to soil). Therefore, I would expect the pattern to have a lot more to do with the amount of disturbance different areas are exposed to. Perhaps a lot of tropical areas can have intense monsoon seasons, but there are just as many examples I can think of of temperate areas with regular disturbances.

In addition, I tend to think of the incredible diversity of orchid species in the tropics and many of these species often rely on a specific fungal species to even germinate. So I would also expect to see more diversity both in fungi and bacteria in the tropics

Is any of my line of thinking on this misled? Would love to have it pointed out!