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Resource: used or used up in processesLitter
Appears in 11 processs and 34 steps. Everything below is linked: open a process to see it in context.
Top processes
Soil fauna
9 steps- Macrofauna shred and ingest litter
- Earthworm ecological group
- Epigeic worms feed on surface litter
- and 6 more in this process
- Microarthropods number about 10^4-10^5 per square metre in forest floors and live in air-filled pores and litter spaces
- Feeding guild of the microarthropod: fungivore, litter feeder, predator or omnivore
- Oribatid mites have slow life histories, low fecundity, and many parthenogenetic species, so populations recover slowly after disturbance
- and 2 more in this process
- Worm ingests soil and litter, casting of the order of 10-40 tonnes per hectare per year in temperate pasture
- Anecic worms (Lumbricus terrestris) build litter-and-cast middens at burrow entrances with higher microbial activity and N
- Non-native Lumbricus and Amynthas worms invading northern hardwood forests consume the forest floor and reduce its mass and thickness
- and 1 more in this process
Organic matter decomposition
3 steps- Cord-forming basidiomycetes (Phanerochaete velutina, Hypholoma fasciculare) explore soil as fans of fine hyphae from a resource base
- Reaching a nutrient-rich patch triggers hyphal proliferation there and thickening of cords back to the base
- Fungi import soil nitrogen into N-poor surface litter and speed its decomposition (fungal translocation in no-till residue)
Show 5 more processes
Saprotrophic fungi
2 steps- Ectomycorrhizal fungi compete with free-living decomposers for N and may slow decomposition (the Gadgil effect): trenching to remove ectomycorrhizal roots raised litter mass loss in a pine plantation
- Evidence for the Gadgil effect is mixed: trenching also changes soil moisture and root input, confounding the result
Often found with
Nitrogen 9Earthworms 7Saprotrophic fungi 6Soil organic matter 6Springtails 5Oribatid mites 5Soil fauna 4Oxygen 4Carbon 4Fungal biomass 4Bacteria 3Mites 3
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