Abstract
Decomposition is an essential ecosystem service driven by interacting biotic and abiotic factors. Increasing temperatures due to climate change can affect soil moisture, soil fauna, and subsequently, decomposition. Understanding how projected climate change scenarios will affect decomposition is of vital importance for predicting nutrient cycling and ecosystem health. In this study, we experimentally addressed the question of how the early stages of decomposition would vary along a gradient of projected climate change scenarios. Given the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem service provisioning, we measured the effect of invertebrate exclusion on red maple (Acer rubrum) leaf litter breakdown along a temperature gradient using litterbags in warming chambers over a period of five weeks. Leaf litter decomposed more slowly in the warmer chambers and in the litterbag treatment that minimized invertebrate access. Moreover, increasing air temperature reduced invertebrate abundance and richness, and altered the community composition, independent of exclusion treatment. Using structural equation models, we were able to disentangle the effects of average air temperature on leaf litter loss, finding a direct negative effect of warming on the early stages of decomposition, independent of invertebrate abundance. This result indicates that not only can climate change affect the invertebrate community, but may also directly influence how the remaining organisms interact with their environment and their effectiveness at provisioning ecosystem services. Overall, our study highlights the role of biodiversity in maintaining ecosystem services and contributes to our understanding of how climate change could disrupt nutrient cycling.
Highlights
In light of current and projected increases in global average temperature, understanding the relative contribution of various biotic and abiotic factors on ecosystem service provisioning under various climate change scenarios becomes of utmost importance [1, 2]
The abundance and richness of the invertebrate community in each bag varied by invertebrate exclusion treatment (χ22 = 31.14, P < 0.001 and χ22 = 40.31, P < 0.001, respectively; S2 Fig), with lower abundance and richness in the maximal invertebrate exclusion treatment compared to the moderate and minimal, which did not differ among themselves (S1 Table)
Community composition was affected by the invertebrate exclusion treatment (F2,29 = 4.80, R2 = 0.23, P < 0.001)
Summary
In light of current and projected increases in global average temperature, understanding the relative contribution of various biotic and abiotic factors on ecosystem service provisioning under various climate change scenarios becomes of utmost importance [1, 2]. The relationship between decomposition and climate is interdependent, with climate being a primary predictor. Warming affects soil communities and impairs decomposition number NSF-2010615 to LLF), Building Strength Program at Bowling Green State University, Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research (G20141015641995), and the United States National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DBI 1459519) award to Harvard Forest.
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