Data from: Temporal dynamics of bark and wood functional traits in determining invertebrate communities during coarse and fine woody debris decomposition

Plant functional traits act as environmental filters, influencing
invertebrate community assembly during decomposition processes and thus
biogeochemical cycling. Within a plant, bark and wood exhibit distinct
functional trait characteristics, and these traits further vary among
different sizes of deadwood, such as coarse woody debris (CWD) and fine
woody debris (FWD), as well as different decomposition stages. Despite
this, studies on deadwood biodiversity and decomposition often ignore
differences between bark and wood. We examined how bark and wood
functional traits structure invertebrate communities during deadwood
decomposition using a 42-month experiment with 41 woody species in
subtropical forests. We hypothesized that i) invertebrate abundance and
diversity are higher for resource-acquisitive traits than for
resource-conservative traits; ii) bark traits are more important for FWD
and wood traits are more important for CWD in determining invertebrate
communities, and iii) the effect of bark traits on invertebrate
communities dominates during early decomposition stage, while the effect
of wood traits on invertebrate communities dominates during later decay
stages. Our results demonstrated size- and stage-dependent trait effects
on invertebrate communities. The bark economics spectrum (BES) was
positively related to invertebrate abundance and richness during early
decomposition (18 months), with stronger effects for FWD than for CWD. In
contrast, the wood economic spectrum (WES) influenced invertebrate
diversity only in CWD but not FWD. Effects of WES persisted through both
early and later decomposition stages (42 months), but the effect strength
and direction showed strong site dependency. Synthesis. Our results show
that bark traits are important drivers of invertebrate diversity in
deadwood during early decomposition for both FWD and CWD, whereas effects
of wood traits are longer-lasting, but restricted to CWD. These findings
expand our understanding of the afterlife effect of plant traits by
demonstrating that bark and wood traits play distinct roles for
invertebrate community assembly, while their relative importance shifts
during deadwood decay. Studies of deadwood-decomposer succession and
plant-invertebrate interactions should therefore consider bark and wood
traits.