Microbial and chemical drivers of leaf litter transformation in a temperate oak forest Raw sequence reads

In forests, fungi are the main actors in the decomposition of leaf litter. However, little is known about their influence on the chemical changes of the litter during decomposition processes.Using a transplantation experiment of two chemically contrasting intraspecific oak leaf litter, we tested two hypotheses: i) the initial chemical properties of the litters control and direct the successional dynamics of the fungal communities or ii) the fungal communities control the litter decomposition processes thanks the production of extracellular enzymes, which lead to the chemical transformation of the substrate. In this aim, we we monitored for two and a half years the development of fungal communities, extracellular enzyme activities, and litter chemical properties during this experiment.