Diverse microbial communities show uniform respiration response to nitrogen addition in simulated early-stage leaf litter decomposition experiments
Renée Z. Wang·Marie Kroeger·Dennis Suazo·Michaeline Albright·Thomas M. Yoshida·John Dunbar·La Verne Gallegos-Graves
Abstract Plant litter decomposition by microbes plays a major role in soil CO 2 and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) production. Adding reactive nitrogen species is predicted to affect these fluxes, but it’s unclear to what extent since both microbial community composition and abiotic soil and litter chemistry will influence outcomes. We therefore sought to understand broad geochemical trends across diverse microbial assemblages during the initial stages of litter decomposition by incubating 10 di