Abstract. Plant succession is a well-studied phenomenon in plant ecology, yet the effects of disturbance and its influence on initial plant composition received little attention in this process. From many of the potential reasons we investigated the effect of soil fungi on early succession. At each site a total of 60 permanent plots were established and fungicide treatment was used on half of the plots, the other half served as control. We found that management by influencing initial plant communities, determine the way how forb and grass dominancy changes in time. In addition, our findings support that the applied fungicide treatment influence successional development of plant communities. Specifically, the elimination of fungi from an annual-dominated (highly disturbed) site led to stronger grass dominance, while decreased the presence of forbs. Nevertheless in the perennial-dominated (less disturbed) site fungicide treatments favored to forbs, but this effect was not significant. Our results suggest that previously used management regimes strongly affect the later secondary successional events that can also be strongly influenced by the soil fungal community.