Diversity-decomposition relationships in forests worldwide
- Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
- CNRS, France
- Research Institute of Forestry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, China
Abstract
Plant species diversity affects carbon and nutrient cycling during litter decomposition, yet the generality of the direction of this effect and its magnitude remain uncertain. With a meta-analysis including 65 field studies across the Earth's major forest ecosystems, we show here that decomposition was faster when litter was composed of more than one species. These positive biodiversity effects were mostly driven by temperate forests, but were more variable in other forests. Litter mixture effects emerged most strongly in early decomposition stages and were related to divergence in litter quality. Litter diversity also accelerated nitrogen, but not phosphorus release, potentially indicating a decoupling of nitrogen and phosphorus cycling and perhaps a shift in ecosystem nutrient limitation with changing biodiversity. Our findings demonstrate the importance of litter diversity effects for carbon and nutrient dynamics during decomposition, and show how these effects vary with litter traits, decomposer complexity and forest characteristics.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data are available on Dryad:https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.nk98sf7qc
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Data from: Diversity-decomposition relationships in forests worldwideDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.nk98sf7qc.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (41830646; 31570443)
- Shenggong Li
National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0600202)
- Shenggong Li
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2020, Kou et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Diversity-decomposition relationships in forests worldwide
eLife 9:e55813.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.55813
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