ABSTRACT
The decomposition of plant litter may be the biosphere’s most complex ecological process in that it involves the interactions of a large number of taxa, spanning much of the range of biotic diversity. Because of the complexity, nearly all efforts to model plant litter decomposition have approached the problem from an ecosystem perspective: predicting mass loss (the emergent biotic process) from litter composition and physical conditions-the abiotic template (26,53). Technological developments of the past two decades have removed many impediments to the study of microbial dynamics in natural systems; however, many of these tools have not been applied extensively to the study of microdecomposer communities; this is beginning to change (22,75). Consequently, fundamental information on structural and functional patterns across systems, a requisite for development of general models, is lacking. The significance of this gap is apparent in the context of global change. The effects of atmospheric carbon enrichment, nitrogen deposition, climate alteration, and other anthropogenic processes on ecosystems cannot be predicted without decomposition models grounded in biotic process (51,52).
