Wardle, David
- Department of Forest Vegetation Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Landcare Research
Research article2008Peer reviewed
Plant species traits are the predominant control on litter decomposition rates within biomes worldwide
Cornwell, William K.; Cornelissen, Johannes H. C.; Amatangelo, Kathryn; Dorrepaal, Ellen; Eviner, Valerie T.; Godoy, Oscar; Hobbie, Sarah E.; Hoorens, Bart; Kurokawa, Hiroko; Perez-Harguindeguy, Natalia; Quested, Helen M.; Santiago, Louis S.; Wardle, David A.; Wright, Ian J.; Aerts, Rien; Allison, Steven D.; van Bodegom, Peter; Brovkin, Victor; Chatain, Alex; Callaghan, Terry V.;
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Abstract
Worldwide decomposition rates depend both on climate and the legacy of plant functional traits as litter quality. To quantify the degree to which functional differentiation among species affects their litter decomposition rates, we brought together leaf trait and litter mass loss data for 818 species from 66 decomposition experiments on six continents. We show that: (i) the magnitude of species-driven differences is much larger than previously thought and greater than climate-driven variation; (ii) the decomposability of a species' litter is consistently correlated with that species' ecological strategy within different ecosystems globally, representing a new connection between whole plant carbon strategy and biogeochemical cycling. This connection between plant strategies and decomposability is crucial for both understanding vegetation-soil feedbacks, and for improving forecasts of the global carbon cycle.
Keywords
carbon cycling; decomposition; leaf economic spectrum; leaf traits; meta-analysis
Published in
Ecology Letters
2008, Volume: 11, number: 10, pages: 1065-1071
Publisher: BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Publication identifier
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01219.x
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/19476