Earthworms and plants greatly affect belowground properties; however, their com bined effects are more attractive based on the ecosystem scale in the field condition.To address this point, we manipulated earthworms (exotic endogeic species Pontoscolex corethrurus) and plants (living plants [native tree species Evodia lepta] and artificialplants) to investigate their combined effects on soil microorganisms, soil nutrients, andsoil respiration in a subtropical forest. The manipulation of artificial plants aimed tosimulate the physical effects of plants (e.g., shading and interception of water) suchthat the biological effects of plants could be evaluated separately. We found that rela tive to the controls, living plants but not artificial plants significantly increased theratio of fungal to bacterial phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) and fungal PLFAs.Furthermore, earthworms plus living plants significantly increased the soil respirationand decreased the soil NH4+-N, which indicates that the earthworm effects on the as sociated carbon, and nitrogen processes were greatly affected by living plants. Thepermutational multivariate analysis of variance results also indicated that living plantsbut not earthworms or artificial plants significantly changed the soil microbial com munity. Our results suggest that the effects of plants on soil microbes and associatedsoil properties in this study were largely explained by their biological rather than theirphysical effects.