Plant effects on the soil community: A microcosm experiment

Abstract An experiment was carried out in microcosms for testing the hypothesis that a higher level of primary production should maintain a decomposer community with higher biomass and activity. Microcosms with coniferous forest humus and a diverse microbial and faunal community were divided into three sets: (1) control without plants, (2) with birch seedlings in full illumination, and (3) with birch seedlings, shaded to reduce the net primary production. During 16 weeks of incubation at +16 °C, no treatment effects were found in numbers or biomass of taxonomic or functional groups of soil organisms, nor in the system respiration in darkness. The community structure of the shaded systems di…