Litter decomposition is an important process in the global carbon cycle. It accounts for most of the heterotrophic soil respiration and results in formation of more stable soil organic carbon (SOC) which is the largest terrestrial carbon stock. Litter decomposition may induce remarkable feedbacks to climate change because it is a climate-dependent process. To investigate the global patterns of ...

The nutrition of gilts and first-litter sows is discussed in relation to recent research findings. Preliminary data from commercial piggeries suggest that gilts which enter the breeding herd with low fat reserves subsequently have a lower reproductive efficiency . The results of three experiments indicated that first-litter sows required a different feeding strategy during lactation compared to...

Litter moisture contents vary greatly between and within practical poultry barns. The current experiment was designed to measure the effects of 8 different dietary characteristics on litter and excreta moisture content. Additionally, free water content and water activity of the excreta and litter were evaluated as additional quality measures. The dietary treatments consisted of nonstarch polysa...

Aboveground litter inputs have been greatly altered by human disturbances and climate change, which have important effects on soil respiration. However, the knowledge of how soil respiration responds to altered litter inputs is limited in tropical and subtropical forests. We conducted an aboveground litterfall manipulation experiment in three successional forests in the subtropics to examine th...

This work tested the hypothesis that ectomycorrhizas (EM) of Dicymbe corymbosa alter leaf-litter decomposition and residual litter quality in tropical forests of Guyana. Mass loss of leaf litter in litter bags was determined on three occasions, in two experiments, during a 12-month period. Paired root-exclusion plots were located randomly within a D. corymbosa forest. Both D. corymbosa and mixe...

Most of the terrestrial net primary production enters the decomposer system as dead organic matter, and the subsequent recycling of C and nutrients are key processes for the functioning of ecosystems and the delivery of ecosystem goods and services. Although climatic and substrate quality controls are reasonably well understood, the functional role of biodiversity for biogeochemical cycles rema...

Phosphorus (P) losses from pastures fertilized with poultry litter contribute to the degradation of surface water quality in the United States. Dietary modification and manure amendments may reduce potential P runoff losses from pastures. In the current study, broilers were fed a normal diet, phytase diet, high available phosphorus (HAP) corn diet, or HAP corn + phytase diet. Litter treatments ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Litter often decomposes faster in its environment of origin (at 'home') than in a foreign environment ('away'), which has become known as the home-field advantage (HFA). However, many studies have highlighted the conditional nature of the HFA, suggesting that current understanding of this phenomenon is not yet sufficient to generalize across systems. METHODS The HFA hypoth...