Nutrient cycling plays a critical role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural, urban, and natural lands. However, across landscapes there is substantial unexplained heterogeneity in nutrient cycling. Classic thinking holds that abiotic factors are the source of this spatial heterogeneity with a secondary role of plant biomass. However, recent work suggests that higher trophic levels or variation in traits at the level of plant genotype may also play an important role in structuring nutrient environments. For instance, herbivores may indirectly create heterogeneity in cycling through the induction of chemical and structural changes in plants traits. Phenotypic plasticity due to anti-herbivore defense may then alter nutrient cycling rates by changing the microbial breakdown of plant litter inputs. Alternatively, variation among plant genotypes in the expression of these same traits may overwhelm the influence of phenotypic plasticity on soil processes. Both genetic and environmentally based changes in plant traits have separately been demonstrated to alter soil processes, but their interaction and the relative importance of these sources of variation across local landscapes is unknown.