Wall, Diana H. and Bradford, Mark A. and St. John, Mark G. and Trofymow, John A. and Valerie, Behan-Pelletier and Bignell, David E. and Dangerfield, J. Mark and Parton, William J. and Rusek, Rosef and Voigt, Winfried and Wolters, Volkmar and Gardel, Holley Zadeh and Ayuke, Fred O. and Bashford, Richard and Beljakova, Olga I. and Bohlen, Patrick J. and Brauman, Alain and Flemming, Stephen and Henschel, Joh R. and Johnson, Dan L. and Jones, T. Hefin and Kovarova, Marcela and Kranabetter, J. Marty and Kutny, Les and Lin and Maryati Mohamed, Datin and Masse, Dominique and Pokarzhevskii, Andrei and Rahman, Homathevi and Sabara, Millor G. and Salamon, Joerg-Alfred and Swift, Michael J. and Varela, Varela and Vasconcelos, Heraldo L. and White, Don and Zou, Xiaoming (2008) Global decomposition experiment shows soil animal impacts on decomposition are climate-dependent. Global Change Biology, 14 (11). pp. 2661-2677. ISSN 1354-1013
|
Text
Global_decomposition_experiment_shows_soil_animal_impacts_on_decomposition_are_climate.pdf Download (46kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Climate and litter quality are primary drivers of terrestrial decomposition and, based on evidence from multisite experiments at regional and global scales, are universally factored into global decomposition models. In contrast, soil animals are considered key regulators of decomposition at local scales but their role at larger scales is unresolved. Soil animals are consequently excluded from global models of organic mineralization processes. Incomplete assessment of the roles of soil animals stems from the difficulties of manipulating invertebrate animals experimentally across large geographic gradients. This is compounded by deficient or inconsistent taxonomy. We report a global decomposition experiment to assess the importance of soil animals in C mineralization, in which a common grass litter substrate was exposed to natural decomposition in either control or reduced animal treatments across 30 sites distributed from 43 degrees S to 68 degrees N on six continents. Animals in the mesofaunal size range were recovered from the litter by Tullgren extraction and identified to common specifications, mostly at the ordinal level. The design of the trials enabled faunal contribution to be evaluated against abiotic parameters between sites. Soil animals increase decomposition rates in temperate and wet tropical climates, but have neutral effects where temperature or moisture constrain biological activity. Our findings highlight that faunal influences on decomposition are dependent on prevailing climatic conditions. We conclude that (1) inclusion of soil animals will improve the predictive capabilities of region- or biome-scale decomposition models, (2) soil animal influences on decomposition are important at the regional scale when attempting to predict global change scenarios, and (3) the statistical relationship between decomposition rates and climate, at the global scale, is robust against changes in soil faunal abundance and diversity.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword: | Biodiversity and conservation, Environmental sciences & ecology |
| Subjects: | ?? QH77_T78J68 ?? Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301-705.5 Biology (General) > QH540-549.5 Ecology |
| Department: | INSTITUTE > Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation |
| Depositing User: | ADMIN ADMIN |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Aug 2011 16:08 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Oct 2017 11:45 |
| URI: | https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/1394 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |