After 840 litter bags sewed, 2.5 months of decomposition, 4 years of experiment running and more than a 100 helpers helping, we are happy to announce that we submitted last week the first results of the PaNDiv Experiment. This paper looks at the response of decomposition to direct and indirect effects of nitrogen enrichment, with a fancy structural equation model testing the relative importance of litter quality and soil biotic and abiotic conditions.

It highlights the importance of a plant community functional shift under nitrogen enrichment. And for those that can’t wait until the paper gets accepted, here is the submitted draft on bioRxiv:

Decomposition disentangled, Pichon et al. 2019 (preprint)

Final results of the structural equation model, showing effects of nitrogen enrichment, plant species richness and plant functional composition on decomposition. Dashed arrows show negative, full arrows positive path coefficients. The arrow size is proportional to the path coefficient. Double-headed grey arrows show covariances.