Nitrogen addition weakens home-field advantage of litter decomposition by altering soil pH and bacterial communities in a subtropical forest

doi:10.1093/jpe/rtaf089

J Plant Ecol ›› Advance articles DOI:10.1093/jpe/rtaf089

Nitrogen addition weakens home-field advantage of litter decomposition by altering soil pH and bacterial communities in a subtropical forest

Chunhui Li^a,†, Jiguang Feng^b,c,†, Liu Liu^a, Xu Sun^d, Jinsheng Li^e, Zhuangzhuang Qian^a, Ranran Fu^a, Qingshui Yu^f, Biao Zhu^f, Xiao Tao^a,f,*

^aSchool of Forestry and Landscape Architecture, Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Forest Resources and Silviculture, Hefei Urban Ecosystem Research Station of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China
^bMinistry of Education Key Laboratory for Ecology and Resource Use of the Mongolian Plateau, Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory for Grassland Ecology, and School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, Huhhot 010021, China
^cNational Key Laboratory of Water Disaster Prevention, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Soil and Water Processes in Watershed, College of Geography and Remote Sensing, Hohai University, Nanjing 211000, China
^dSchool of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China
^eCollege of Resources and Environment, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China
^fState Key Laboratory for Vegetation Structure, Function and Construction (VegLab), Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, and College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

^*Corresponding author. E-mail: taoxiao@ahau.edu.cn
^†These authors contributed equally to this work.

Online:2025-07-12 Published:2025-07-12
Supported by:
This study was founded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 32271954 and 32201395).

Abstract

Abstract: The home-field advantage (HFA) hypothesis predicts that litter decomposes faster in its home environment than elsewhere. Given the critical role of HFA effect on litter decomposition in terrestrial carbon and nutrient cycling, it remains unclear how nitrogen (N) deposition affects this effect. Here, we conducted a 12-month field experiment involving reciprocal litter translocation, with four N addition levels (0, 30, 50, 100 kg N ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹), in Quercus acutissima and Pinus massoniana stands in a subtropical urban forest and a mini meta-analysis of the effect of N addition on HFA in global forests. Results showed that a significant positive HFA of 3.98 was observed, but N addition (particularly with high rates) tended to weaken it, by decreasing it to −6.12 at 100 kg N ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹. Conversely, the combined HFA index increased with bacterial community dissimilarity between stands. Such relationships were due to that N addition changed soil bacterial diversity and composition in P. massoniana stand and led to the convergence of bacterial communities between stands, mainly by lowering soil pH. Similarly, our experiment and meta-analysis showed that the species-level HFA index and its response to N addition also decreased with N addition rate (P < 0.05), suggesting the generalization of how N addition affects HFA. Our findings suggest that soil acidification driven by N inputs indirectly reduces HFA through altering bacterial communities, which helps to better understand and predict the dynamics of HFA effect and the cycling of carbon and nitrogen in forest ecosystems under N deposition.

Key words: carbon cycling, litter decomposition, home-field advantage, microbial community composition, microbial diversity

Chunhui Li, Jiguang Feng, Liu Liu, Xu Sun, Jinsheng Li, Zhuangzhuang Qian, Ranran Fu, Qingshui Yu, Biao Zhu, Xiao Tao. Nitrogen addition weakens home-field advantage of litter decomposition by altering soil pH and bacterial communities in a subtropical forest[J]. J Plant Ecol, DOI: 10.1093/jpe/rtaf089.

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Nitrogen addition weakens home-field advantage of litter decomposition by altering soil pH and bacterial communities in a subtropical forest

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