Title: Plant phylogenetic history explains in-stream decomposition at a global scale

Abstract

1. Evolutionary history and adaptation to climate shape plant traits. Some include leaf traits that influence litter quality. As a result, evolutionary history should affect litter decomposition, a crucial ecosystem process. In addition, litter decomposition is directly influenced by climate. Similarly, we expect plant phylogeny, adaptation and climate to jointly influence litter decomposition. These effects and their interactions have yet to be untangled at a global scale.2. Here we introduce an analysis of variation in litter decomposition rates in rivers and streams across 285 published studies for 239 species (from ferns to angiosperms) distributed at 494 locations world-wide. We estimated the relative contributions of climatic conditions and phylogenetic heritage on litter decomposition rates, partitioning phylogenetic from climatic effects at the site and species levels using phylogenetic eigenvector analysis and phylogenetic linear mixed models. In addition, we modelled transitions in decomposition rates under a suite of multiple adaptive-regime Ornstein–Uhlenbeck models to test the hypothesis that natural selection has shaped clade-level litter decomposition rates.3. Leaf litter decomposition rate exhibited a significant phylogenetic signal. Modelling decomposition rate as a function of location, climatic niche and phylogeny consistently recovered phylogeny alone as one of the top models in species-level analyses. Since many previous studiesmore » have focused on the same species across many locations, we also conducted analyses at the species × site level. Both phylogenetic and climatic factors were favoured in models of this analysis, but the single most important predictor for angiosperms and for all taxa analysed together was phylogeny alone.4. Synthesis. For plant species distributed globally at nearly 500 locations we found that plant phylogenetic history is a critically important predictor of litter decomposition rate in rivers and streams, explaining more of the variance in decomposition than site or climatic regime. Thus, our study demonstrates the influence of evolutionary history on suites of plant traits that shape a key ecosystem process.« less

Authors:

LeRoy, Carri J.  ^[1];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-1185-4437"
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Hipp, Andrew L. ^[2]; Lueders, Kate ^[3]; Follstad Shah, Jennifer J. ^[4]; Kominoski, John S. ^[5]; Ardón, Marcelo ^[6]; Dodds, Walter K. ^[7]; Gessner, Mark O. ^[8]; Griffiths, Natalie A.  ^[9];

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Griffiths, Natalie A."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0003-0068-7714"
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Lecerf, Antoine  ^[10];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-7802-9773"
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Manning, David W. P. ^[11]; Sinsabaugh, Robert L. ^[12]; Webster, Jack R. ^[13]; Wardle, David ^[14]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA (United States)
2. Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL (United States); Field Museum, Chicago, IL (United States)
3. Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL (United States)
4. Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States)
5. Florida Intl Univ., Miami, FL (United States)
6. North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States)
7. Kansas State Univ., Manhattan, KS (United States)
8. Leibniz‐Inst. of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Stechlin (Germany); Technische Univ. Berlin (Germany)
9. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
10. Université de Toulouse (France)
11. Univ. of Nebraska, Omaha, NE (United States)
12. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)
13. Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)
14. Nanyang Technological Univ. (Singapore)

Publication Date:

2019-07-27

Research Org.:

Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)

OSTI Identifier:

1564182

Alternate Identifier(s):

OSTI ID: 1557874

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC05-00OR22725; DE‐AC05‐00OR22725

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Journal of Ecology

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Journal of Ecology; Journal ID: ISSN 0022-0477

Publisher:

Wiley

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; climate; decomposition rate; ecosystem process; evolutionary ecology; global ecology; leaf litter; phylogenetic comparative methods