Does Litter Decomposition Rate Indicate Species Status in the Plant Community of Alpine Meadow?

Litter decomposition is the physical and chemical breakdown of dead plant material, which is affected by the litter quality, environmental conditions and the composition of decomposer communities (Parton et al. 2007). Within biomes, environmental conditions set a similar background broadly (Berg et al. 1993; Moore et al., 2001; Raich et al. 2006; Parton et al. 2007) and microbial communities are assumed to be ‘functionally equivalent’ in terms of carbon metabolism (Andrén and Balandreau 1999). Consequently, litter quality has been considered as the predominant control on the rate of decomposition of organic matter in the ecosystem (Cornwell et al. 2008). Litter quality was closely related with nutrient use efficiency (NUE), which covers a variety of physiological processes, including the relation between the nutrient content of a plant and its growth rate (Small 1972) and the partitioning of nutrients between litterfall and ‘resorption’ pathways (Vitousek 1982). Nutrient use efficiency plays an important role in the success of plants in intra- and interspecies competition in natural eco-systems (Small 1972). Here we hypothesis that the plant community structure, which was decided by earlier NUE interactions, may correlate with the litter decomposition rates.