Home‐field advantage of litter decomposition differs between leaves and fine roots.

Home-field advantage of litter decomposition differs between leaves and fine roots Keywords: aboveground-belowground; home-field advantage; litter decomposition; local adaptation; plant-soil interactions EN aboveground-belowground home-field advantage litter decomposition local adaptation plant-soil interactions 995 1000 6 07/16/20 20200815 NES 200815 Introduction Litter decomposition is a fundamental process influencing carbon dynamics and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. Because leaves and roots of the same species commonly differ substantially in their chemical compositions (Freschet I et al. i , 2012b; Ma I et al. i , 2016; Sun I et al. i , 2018), different substrate qualities may stimulate contrasting microbial communities characterized by varying metabolic requirements and catabolic capacities (Sauvadet I et al. i , 2019). In line with these results, previous microcosm incubation and field studies have also reported that root litter decomposition did not exhibit significant HFA effects (Jacobs I et al. i , 2018; Minerovic I et al. i , 2018). [Extracted from the article]