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Climbing plants are increasing in dominance in the subtropical forests of South China and other areas around the world, altering patterns of plant dominance and evenness in community. We investigated how changes in species’ identity and patterns of leaf litter evenness affected decomposition of litter mixtures.

We used litter-bag method to study the influence of different relative abundance mixtures (75 % : 25 %; 50 % : 50 %; 25 % : 75 %) of plant litter from two functional groups (climbing plants and trees) on decomposition rates in a subtropical forest in Guangdong, China.

We found negative non-additive effects of mixing litter overall and species composition affected decomposition rates the most. In addition, when climbing plants were dominant, even mixtures decomposed …