Figure 1
From: Microbial legacies alter decomposition in response to simulated global change
(a) Experimental design of the drought reciprocal transplant within the global change experiment. A parallel design was carried out for the nitrogen reciprocal transplant. Global change manipulations were initiated in February 2007. In December 2010, microbial cage litterbags were filled with sterilized leaf litter, collected from either ambient rainfall or drought treatment plots (litter origin). Each litterbag was then inoculated with a microbial inoculum collected from ambient or drought plots (microbial origin). Finally, sealed litterbags were placed back into ambient or drought plots (plot environment). One bag from each of eight replicate blocks was destructively sampled at the end of each rainy season (March) for 3 years. (b) To assay resilience of the microbial community, we quantified how well microbial origin explained either microbial composition or functioning (litter mass loss) at each time point. A steep decline in variance explained over time indicates high resilience; a slow decline over time indicates strong legacy effects (dashed gray arrow).
