ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2008
Links between plant litter chemistry, species diversity, and below-ground ecosystem function.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ecological Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Forest-Medicinal Plant Agroforestry Systems on Soil Quality and the Understory Environment.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Resource Quality and Fungal Richness Are Associated with Soil Organic Matter Dynamics in a Temperate Forest in South Korea.Biology · 2026Article
- Litter Mixing Effects Modulate UV-Induced Photodegradation Across Grasslands.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Ecological role of emergent properties in the chemodiversity landscape.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Review
- Vegetation Mosaic Effects on Soil Microbial Community Structure and Enzyme Functioning in Relation to Nutrient Heterogeneity in a Mountainous Ecotone.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Nitrogen deposition significantly alters the nonadditive effects of mixed litter decomposition on soil bio and chemical properties.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Litter mixture decomposition enhances the accumulation of soil active carbon and nitrogen in an alpine grassland.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Bacterial and Fungal Communities Respond Differently to Changing Soil Properties Along Afforestation Dynamic.Microbial ecology · 2025Article
- Fine root and soil carbon stocks are positively related in grasslands but not in forests.Communications earth & environment · 2025Article
- Molecular-level carbon traits underlie the multidimensional fine root economics space.Nature plants · 2024Article
- Litter mixing promoted decomposition and altered microbial community in common bean root litter.BMC microbiology · 2023Article
- Article
- Different and unified responses of soil bacterial and fungal community composition and predicted functional potential to 3 years' drought stress in a semiarid alpine grassland.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Soil carbon storage is related to tree functional composition in naturally regenerating tropical forests.Functional ecology · 2022Article
- Litter Mixing Alters Microbial Decomposer Community to Accelerate Tomato Root Litter Decomposition.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Integrating remote sensing with ecology and evolution to advance biodiversity conservation.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Review
- Remotely detected aboveground plant function predicts belowground processes in two prairie diversity experiments.Ecological monographs · 2022Article
- The Diversity of Soil Bacteria and Fungi Under Altered Nitrogen and Rainfall Patterns in a Temperate Steppe.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Effect of Alteration in Precipitation Amount on Soil Microbial Community in a Semi-Arid Grassland.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Determinism of nonadditive litter mixture effect on decomposition: Role of the moisture content of litters.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Decomposition is a critical source of plant nutrients, and drives the largest flux of terrestrial C to the atmosphere. Decomposing soil organic matter typically contains litter from multiple plant species, yet we lack a mechanistic understanding of how species diversity influences decomposition processes. Here, we show that soil C and N cycling during decomposition are controlled by the composition and diversity of chemical compounds within plant litter mixtures, rather than by simple metrics of plant species diversity. We amended native soils with litter mixtures containing up to 4 alpine plant species, and we used 9 litter chemical traits to evaluate the chemical composition (i.e., the identity and quantity of compounds) and chemical diversity of the litter mixtures. The chemical composition of the litter mixtures was the strongest predictor of soil respiration, net N mineralization, and microbial biomass N. Soil respiration and net N mineralization rates were also significantly correlated with the chemical diversity of the litter mixtures. In contrast, soil C and N cycling rates were poorly correlated with plant species richness, and there was no relationship between species richness and the chemical diversity of the litter mixtures. These results indicate that the composition and diversity of chemical compounds in litter are potentially important functional traits affecting decomposition, and simple metrics like plant species richness may fail to capture variation in these traits. Litter chemical traits therefore provide a mechanistic link between organisms, species diversity, and key components of below-ground ecosystem function.
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