“…In terms of habitat fragmentation, for example, Moreno et al (2017) observed that within the same species, plants growing at the forest edge had a higher leaf carbon‐to‐nitrogen ratio and, thus, reduced litter quality, and in a common garden decomposition experiment they showed that such ITV caused a reduction in litter decomposition rates of leaves from “edge” plants. In addition, habitat fragmentation also influences litter decomposition rates by altering site conditions (Bradford et al, 2015; Wardle et al, 2004), which can themselves drive intraspecific shifts in plant traits (e.g., Moreno et al, 2017), leading to challenges in discriminating confounding “donor effects” (plant traits) from “recipient effects” (site conditions) on litter decomposition in the field. So far, previous studies investigating drivers of litter decomposition in fragmented forests focused on either leaf trait effects alone using common garden decomposition experimental manipulation (e.g., Moreno et al, 2017) or environmental drivers using common litter substrate experiments (e.g., Didham, 1998; Riutta et al, 2012), leaving the relative effects of these collinear drivers of litter decomposition elusive in fragmented forests.…”