Abstract
Estimates of decomposition and consumption rates of plant litter generally rely on the incubation of a known quantity of leaves. However, the chemical composition of natural plant material is highly variable among species and biogeographic regions, and cannot be easily manipulated for experimental purposes. This chapter describes a method to overcome these constraints using decomposition and consumption tablets (DECOTABs). DECOTABs are easy-to-prepare agar-based pellets (agar 25% dry mass) with the remaining 75% being organic matter (OM) at choice. In the standard DECOTAB, the 75% OM consists entirely of cellulose powder. For specific DECOTABs, part or all of the cellulose can be replaced to vary OM composition, for example, by adding particulate organic matter, ground plant litter or specific substances such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). This makes the DECOTABs highly standardized, inexpensive and adjustable, enabling extensive manipulation of chemical composition. Proposed only recently, DECOTABs have already provided insight into the importance of environmental conditions, detritivore community composition and litter quality in controlling decomposition and consumption rates.
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Van der Lee, G.H., Hunting, E.R., Vonk, J.A., Kraak, M.H.S. (2020). Decomposition and Consumption Tablets (DECOTABs). In: Bärlocher, F., Gessner, M., Graça, M. (eds) Methods to Study Litter Decomposition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30515-4_57
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30515-4_57
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