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Tropical tree species composition affects the oxidation of dissolved organic matter from litter

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Abstract

Plant species effects on soil nutrient availability are relatively well documented, but the effects of species differences in litter chemistry on soil carbon cycling are less well understood, especially in the species-rich tropics. In many wet tropical forest ecosystems, leaching of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from the litter layer accounts for a significant proportion of litter mass loss during decomposition. Here we investigated how tree species differences in soluble dissolved organic C (DOC) and nutrients affected soil CO2 fluxes in laboratory incubations. We leached DOM from freshly fallen litter of six canopy tree species collected from a tropical rain forest in Costa Rica and measured C-mineralization. We found significant differences in litter solubility and nutrient availability. Following DOM additions to soil, rates of heterotrophic respiration varied by as much as an order of magnitude between species, and overall differences in total soil CO2 efflux varied by more than four-fold. Variation in the carbon: phosphorus ratio accounted for 51% of the variation in total CO2 flux between species. These results suggest that tropical tree species composition may influence soil C storage and mineralization via inter-specific variation in plant litter chemistry.

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Acknowledgments

We thank H. and M. Michaud of the Drake Bay Wilderness Camp for providing field access and logistical support in Costa Rica, and Francisco Campos and the Organización para Estudios Tropicales (OET) and the Ministerio de Ambiente y Energia (MINAE) in Costa Rica for assisting with research permits and logistics. We are grateful to Daniel Liptzin and Matthew Miller for valuable discussions and insight during the experimental design and data analysis. We appreciate comments on the manuscript made by Nataly Ascarrunz and two anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant DEB-0515744 (to A.R.T. and C.·C.C).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and INSTAAR, University of Colorado, 450 UCB/1560 30th Street, Boulder, CO, 80303, USA

    William R. Wieder & Alan R. Townsend

  2. Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA

    Cory C. Cleveland

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  1. William R. Wieder
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Correspondence to William R. Wieder.

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Wieder, W.R., Cleveland, C.C. & Townsend, A.R. Tropical tree species composition affects the oxidation of dissolved organic matter from litter. Biogeochemistry 88, 127–138 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-008-9200-0

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