Factors driving the home-field advantage in litter decomposition: decomposer starvation effects and nutrient limitations

To evaluate the overall contribution of HFA to litter decomposition and identify its drivers, we quantitatively analyzed a global dataset comprising 1,434 observations from 66 studies. We employed two commonly used models: (1) the Home Field Advantage Index (HFAI), which quantifies HFA based on differences in litter mass loss between native and non-native sites, typically involving reciprocal transplants of two species; and (2) the Decomposer Ability Regression Test (DART), which distinguishes the effects of litter quality and decomposer ability from HFA and requires at least three litter species.