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Placing the Effects of Leaf Litter Diversity on Saprotrophic Microorganisms in the Context of Leaf Type and Habitat

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

Because of conflicting results in previous studies, it is unclear whether litter diversity has a predictable impact on microbial communities or ecosystem processes. We examined whether effects of litter diversity depend on factors that could confound comparisons among previous studies, including leaf type, habitat type, identity of other leaves in the mixture, and spatial covariance at two scales within habitats. We also examined how litter diversity affects the saprotrophic microbial community using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism to profile bacterial and fungal community composition, direct microscopy to quantify bacterial biomass, and ergosterol extraction to quantify fungal biomass. We found that leaf mixture diversity was rarely significant as a main effect (only for fungal biomass), but was often significant as an interaction with leaf type (for ash-free dry mass recovered, carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, fungal biomass, and bacterial community composition). Leaf type and habitat were significant as main effects for all response variables. The majority of variance in leaf ash-free dry mass and C/N ratio was explained after accounting for treatment effects and spatial covariation at the meter (block) and centimeter (litterbag) scales. However, a substantial amount of variability in microbial communities was left unexplained and must be driven by factors at other spatial scales or more complex spatiotemporal dynamics. We conclude that litter diversity effects are primarily dependent on leaf type, rather than habitat type or identity of surrounding leaves, which can guide the search for mechanisms underlying effects of litter diversity on ecosystem processes.

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Acknowledgments

L. Wu was supported by the Chinese scholarship fund (2006A62008). We thank all the Kent State students and faculty who lent a hand with leaf processing on our “big” harvest days. We also thank Dr. Kurt Smemo, Holden Arboretum, for conducting carbon and nitrogen analyses, Dr. Ksenia Namjesnik-Dejanovic and Kent’s Department of Geology for use of their HPLC, and Dr. Robert Heath for use of his microscope.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Lan Wu

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, OH, 44242, USA

    Lan Wu, Larry M. Feinstein, Oscar Valverde-Barrantes, Mark W. Kershner, Laura G. Leff & Christopher B. Blackwood

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  1. Lan Wu
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  2. Larry M. Feinstein
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  3. Oscar Valverde-Barrantes
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  6. Christopher B. Blackwood
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Correspondence to Christopher B. Blackwood.

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Wu, L., Feinstein, L.M., Valverde-Barrantes, O. et al. Placing the Effects of Leaf Litter Diversity on Saprotrophic Microorganisms in the Context of Leaf Type and Habitat. Microb Ecol 61, 399–409 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-010-9760-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-010-9760-0

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