What makes decomposition faster under conspecific trees? The factors controlling the magnitude of home-field advantage

The “home-field advantage (HFA)” for decomposition means that leaf litter decomposes faster on soils under the conspecific species (i.e., the home field) than on soils under different species (i.e., “away”). Many previous studies have demonstrated the HFA, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We conducted a reciprocal litter-decomposition experiment using two species with different leaf traits: Abies mariesii, an evergreen conifer, and Fagus crenata, a deciduous broad-leaved tree. The dominance of these species shifts along an elevation gradient with a transition zone where both species coexist. In mixed forests of the transition zone along the elevation gradient, we explored how the magnitude of HFA between these two species was influenced by temperature, soil properties, or leaf litter traits which could directly affect the decomposition rate. The magnitude of HFA observed between the two species varied widely from -3.89% to 28.3%. Our modeling showed that the magnitude of HF..., , , # What makes decomposition faster under conspecific trees? The factors controlling the magnitude of home-field advantage

## Files

The files were split into 7 zip files. To reproduce the analyses, please extract all files and make the directory structure shown below. When reproducing the analyses, delete rds files in the results directory otherwise the scripts skip the analyses and use the previous calculation.

* **01_k_calculation.r**: calculation of k.
* **02_fig_2_3.r**: analyses for the Fig. 2 and 3.
* **03_fig_4.r**: analyses for the Fig. 4.
* **04_fig_5.r**: analyses for the Fig. 5.
* **05_fig_6.r**: analyses for the Fig. 6.
* **Data**: contains original data.
* **litter_bag.csv**: remaining mass in each litter bag.
* **litter_traits.csv**: litter traits.
* **plot_properties.csv**: plot properties.
* **subplot_properties.csv**: subplot properties.
* **figs**: directory where figure files will be exported by the scripts.
* **results**: contains cached results of the analy...