Dead wood provides a huge terrestrial carbon stock and a habitat to wide-ranging organisms during its decay. Our brief review highlights that, in order to understand environmental change impacts on these functions, we need to quantify the contributions of different interacting biotic and abiotic drivers to wood decomposition. LOG-LIFE is a new long-term 'common-garden' experiment to disentangle the effects of species' wood traits and siterelated environmental drivers on wood decomposition dynamics and its associated diversity of microbial and invertebrate communities. This experiment is firmly rooted in pioneering experiments under the directorship of Terry Callaghan at Abisko Research Station, Sweden. LOGLIFE features two contrasting forest sites in the Netherlands, each hosting a similar set of coarse logs and branches of 10 tree species. LOGLIFE welcomes other researchers to test further questions concerning coarse wood decay that will also help to optimise forest management in view of carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation.

Aim The fine roots of trees may show plastic responses to their resource environment. Several, contrasting hypotheses exist on this plasticity, but empirical evidence for these hypotheses is scattered. This study aims to enhance our understanding of tree root plasticity by examining intra-specific variation in fine-root mass and morphology, fine-root growth and decomposition, and associated mycorrhizal interactions in beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) forests on soils that differ in resource availability. MethodsWe measured the mass and morphological traits of fine roots (i.e. ≤ 2 mm diameter) sampled to 50 cm depth. Fine-root growth was measured with ingrowth cores, and fine-root decomposition with litter bags. Mycorrhizal fungal biomass was determined using ingrowth mesh bags. Results Both tree species showed more than three times higher fine-root mass, and a ten-fold higher fine-root growth rate on sand than on clay, but no or marginal differences in overall fine-root morphology. Within the fine-root category however, beech stands had relatively more root length of their finest roots on clay than on sand. In the spruce stands, ectomycorrhizal mycelium biomass was larger on sand than on clay. Conclusions In temperate beech and spruce forests, fine-root mass and mycorrhizal fungal biomass, rather than fine-root morphology, are changed to ensure uptake under different soil resource conditions. Yet enhancing our mechanistic understanding of fine-root trait plasticity and how it affects tree growth requires more attention to fine-root dynamics, the functional diversity within the fine-roots, and mycorrhizal symbiosis as an important belowground uptake strategy.

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Summary Dead tree trunks have significant ecosystem functions related to biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles. When lying on the soil surface, they are colonized by an array of invertebrate fauna, but what determines their community composition is still unclear. We apply community assembly theory to colonization of tree logs by invertebrates. During early decomposition, the attached bark is critically important as an environment filter for community assembly through habitat provision. Specifically, we hypothesized that the more dissimilar bark traits were between tree species, the more their faunal community compositions would differ. We tested this hypothesis by investigating the effects of bark traits on the invertebrate communities in the early‐decomposing logs of 11 common, temperate tree species placed in the ‘common garden’ experiment LOGLIFE. Bark traits included bark looseness, fissure index, outer bark thickness, ratio of inner to outer bark thickness, punch resistance, water storage capacity and bark pH. The predominant faunal groups studied were Annelida, Isopoda, Chilopoda, Diplopoda, Diptera and Coleoptera. Our results showed (i) strong interspecific differences in bark traits, (ii) that bark traits related to environmental buffering had profound effects on the abundance of specific invertebrate groups, and (iii) the higher the overall bark trait dissimilarity between tree species, the more dissimilar these tree species were in faunal community composition, and the higher was the joint invertebrate family richness. A suite of bark traits together has fundamental afterlife effects on invertebrate community assembly, strongly filtering the colonizing invertebrates in early‐decomposing logs, driving variation in their community composition and diversity. Our findings indicate that bark trait dissimilarity among tree species in forest stands is likely a better indicator of early‐phase dead trunk fauna diversity than tree species diversity per se. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12676/suppinfo is available for this article.