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Our detritivore faeces paper is just out @CommsBio:
Detritivore conversion of litter into faeces accelerates organic matter turnover
A quick summary
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01392-4
Detritivore conversion of litter into faeces accelerates organic matter turnover
A quick summary
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01392-4
In many ecosystems, soil fauna can eat >40% of the litterfall. This ingested litter is hardly assimilated and mainly returned to the soil as faeces. This means that most of this litterfall actually decomposes as *faeces*.
How does this conversion affect organic matter turnover?
How does this conversion affect organic matter turnover?
To answer this question for a broad range of litter and detritivore species, we “produced” faeces from 6 animals species feeding on 6 litter species separately, measured their quality and decomposition rates, and compared it to intact litter.
Here is the stool chart
Here is the stool chart
Faeces were nearly always more labile than the litter from which they were derived. Notably, this increase in lability was larger for recalcitrant litter than for labile litter; a pattern consistent across all detritivore species as different as snails and woodlice.
Similarly, faeces decomposed faster than the litter from which they were derived. Again, this increase was stronger for slow-cycling litter than fast-cycling litter, and again, this pattern was consistent across detritivore species.
This shows that litter conversion into detritivore faeces, by reducing the influence of litter quality, may be an important pathway for organic matter turnover, with far-reaching consequences for the understanding and modelling of the terrestrial carbon cycle.
Many thanks to everyone involved: @JASubke ( @StirBES), Isabel Prater & @CarstenWMueller ( @TUMsoil), Sylvain Coq, Jean-François David & Stephan Hättenschwiler ( @CEFEmontpellier), Mathieu Coulis ( @Cirad) & to funders @BritishEcolSoc and @NERCscience.
PS: Don’t hold your puns!
