Associational decomposition: After‐life traits and interactions among decomposing litters control during‐life aggregation of plant species

Barbe, Lou; Mony, Cendrine; Jung, Vincent; Uroy, Léa; Prinzing, Andreas

doi:10.1111/1365-2435.13612

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Reduced litter decomposition, in turn, might be to the detriment of the plants that produced this litter (Hooper et al 2000 ). This (still highly speculative) reasoning suggests feedback between the recent macroevolution of plant traits, the ecological assembly of decomposers, the recycling of nutrients in ecosystems, and the performance of plants: recent phylogenetic lability of a trait has the potential of reducing soil fauna, litter decomposition, and the performance of plants, hence feeding back negatively on itself (Barbe et al 2020 ). Such negative feedback might be particularly frequent in disturbed habitat types given that they show a particularly strong pattern of phylogenetic lability of traits (Prinzing et al 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why phylogenetic signal of traits is important in ecosystems: uniformity of a plant trait increases soil fauna, but only in a phylogenetically uniform vegetation

et al. 2023

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Phylogenetically closely related plant species often share similar trait states (phylogenetic signal), but local assembly may favor dissimilar relatives and thereby decouple the diversity of a trait from the diversity of phylogenetic lineages. Associated fauna might either benefit from plant trait diversity, because it provides them complementary resources, or suffer from it due to dilution of preferred resources. We hence hypothesize that decoupling of trait and phylogenetic diversity weakens the relationship between the plant-trait diversity and the abundance and diversity of associated fauna. Studying permanent meadows, we tested for combined effects of plant phylogenetic diversity and diversity of two functional traits (specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content) on major groups of soil fauna (earthworms, mites, springtails, nematodes). We found that only in phylogenetically uniform plant communities, was uniformity in the functional traits associated with (i) high abundance in springtails, and (ii) high abundance of the sub-group that feeds more directly on plant material (in springtails and mites) or those that are more prone to disturbance (in nematodes), and (iii) high diversity in all three groups tested (springtails, earthworms, nematodes). Our results suggest that soil fauna profits from the resource concentration in local plant communities that are uniform in both functional traits and phylogenetic lineages. Soil fauna would hence benefit from co-occurrence of closely related plants that have conserved the same trait values, rather than of distantly related plants that have converged in traits. This might result in faster decomposition and a positive feedback between trait conservatism and ecosystem functioning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why phylogenetic signal of traits is important in ecosystems: uniformity of a plant trait increases soil fauna, but only in a phylogenetically uniform vegetation

et al. 2023

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“…Bark represents an understudied but crucial factor in influencing deadwood decomposition (Dossa et al, 2018), for example, by significantly extending the potential time of the entire deadwood decomposition trajectory (Chang, van Logtestijn, et al, 2020; Kahl et al, 2017) and the residence time of C, N and P in dead biomass through altering the access for decomposers, microclimate and chemical conditions within decaying logs (Franceschi et al, 2005; Graca, 2015; Zuo, Berg, et al, 2016). During the decomposition process, plant functional traits at the organ scale were found to have significant afterlife effects (Barbe et al, 2020; Freschet, Aerts, et al, 2012; Zhang et al, 2019) and are the main driving force for plant decomposition locally and even globally (Hu et al, 2018; Zhang et al, 2019), especially concerning the traits associated with plant acquisitive or conservative resource strategies (Cornwell et al, 2008; Weedon et al, 2009). However, although bark decomposition is important not only directly (through bark carbon release vs. sequestration) but also indirectly by influencing wood (xylem) decomposition (Kahl et al, 2017; Dossa et al, 2018; Chang, van Logtestijn, et al, 2020; Tuo et al, 2021), knowledge on the afterlife effects of bark traits on deadwood decomposition still lags behind that of other organs, especially leaves (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Considering inner and outer bark as distinctive tissues helps to disentangle the effects of bark traits on decomposition

Lin

Song

et al. 2022

Journal of Ecology

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1. Revealing the ecological consequences of bark multifunctionality and its underlying traits has become a relatively new but essential focus in plant ecology.Although the enormous differences between the most crucial bark layers, that is, inner and outer bark, in structure and functions have been widely recognized, the overall bark has been regarded as a homogenous tissue in most bark-related studies. This has led to poor knowledge on the functional independence, specialized contributions and possible linkages of inner and outer bark traits across tree species when further evaluating the crucial ecosystem functions that bark provides, especially in driving variation in bark decomposition.2. To fill this research gap, we used a 'common garden experiment' on deadwood of six gymnosperms in a temperate forest in the Netherlands over 4 years of decomposition. We evaluated the differences and associations between the inner and outer bark in initial functional traits, decomposition rates and afterlife effects of traits in driving in situ bark decomposition across tree species at the earlier decomposition stage.3. We report four main findings: (1) inner and outer bark traits varied significantly and were not coordinated across tree species; (2) correspondingly, the decomposition of the inner and outer bark were asynchronous and not coordinated across species and inner bark generally decomposed faster than outer bark; (3) the strong predictive traits driving bark decomposability were bark layer-specific, with several inner bark traits controlling inner bark decomposition rates but outer bark decomposability being poorly predicted by outer bark traits and (4) besides being controlled by inner bark traits, inner bark decomposition was also indirectly regulated by several functional traits and the structure-related trait spectrum of outer bark.

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Associational decomposition: After‐life traits and interactions among decomposing litters control during‐life aggregation of plant species

Cited by 2 publications

References 59 publications

Why phylogenetic signal of traits is important in ecosystems: uniformity of a plant trait increases soil fauna, but only in a phylogenetically uniform vegetation

Why phylogenetic signal of traits is important in ecosystems: uniformity of a plant trait increases soil fauna, but only in a phylogenetically uniform vegetation

Considering inner and outer bark as distinctive tissues helps to disentangle the effects of bark traits on decomposition

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