The contribution of insects to the global forest deadwood decomposition

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Seibold, Sebastian and Rammer, Werner and Hothorn, Torsten and Seidl, Rupert and Ulyshen, Michael D. and Lorz, Janina and Cadotte, Marc W. and Lindenmayer, David B. and Adhikari, Yagya P. and Aragón, Roxana and Bae, Soyeon and Baldrian, Petr and Varandi, Hassan Barimani and Barlow, Jos and Bässler, Claus and Beauchene, Jacques and Berenguer, Erika and Bergamin, Rodrigo S. and Birkemoe, Tone and Boros, Gergely and Brandl, Roland and Brustel, Hervé and Burton, Philip J. and Cakpo-Tossou, Yvonne T. and Castro, Jorge and Cateau, Eugénie and Cobb, Tyler P. and Farwig, Nina and Fernández, Romina D. and Firn, Jennifer and Seng Gan, Kee and González, Grizelle and Gossner, Martin M. and Habel, Jan C. and Hébert, Christian and Heibl, Christoph and Heikkala, Osmo and Hemp, Andreas and Hemp, Claudia and Hjältén, Joakim and Hotes, Stefan and Kouki, Jari and Lachat, Thibault and Liu, Jie and Liu, Yu and Luo, Ya-Huang and Macandog, Damasa M. and Martina, Pablo E. and Mukul, Sharif A. and Nachin, Baatarbileg and Nisbet, Kurtis and O’Halloran, John and Oxbrough, Anne and Nath Pandey, Jeev and Pavlíček, Tomáš and Pawson, Stephen M. and Rakotondranary, Jacques S. and Ramanamanjato, Jean-Baptiste and Rossi, Liana and Schmidl, Jürgen and Schulze, Mark and Seaton, Stephen and Stone, Marisa J. and Stork, Nigel E. and Suran, Byambagerel and Sverdrup-Thygeson, Anne and Thorn, Simon and T, Ganesh and Wardlaw, Timothy J. and Weisser, Wolfgang W. and Yoon, Sungsoo and Zhang, Naili and Müller, Jörg (2021) The contribution of insects to the global forest deadwood decomposition. Nature, 597 (7874). pp. 77-81.

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Abstract

The amount of carbon stored in deadwood is equivalent to about 8 per cent of the global forest carbon stocks1. The decomposition of deadwood is largely governed by climate2–5 with decomposer groups—such as microorganisms and insects—Contributing to variations in the decomposition rates2,6,7. At the global scale, the contribution of insects to the decomposition of deadwood and carbon release remains poorly understood7. Here we present a field experiment of wood decomposition across 55 forest sites and 6 continents. We find that the deadwood decomposition rates increase with temperature, and the strongest temperature effect is found at high precipitation levels. Precipitation affects the decomposition rates negatively at low temperatures and positively at high temperatures. As a net effect—including the direct consumption by insects and indirect effects through interactions with microorganisms—insects accelerate the decomposition in tropical forests (3.9% median mass loss per year). In temperate and boreal forests, we find weak positive and negative effects with a median mass loss of 0.9 per cent and −0.1 per cent per year, respectively. Furthermore, we apply the experimentally derived decomposition function to a global map of deadwood carbon synthesized from empirical and remote-sensing data, obtaining an estimate of 10.9 ± 3.2 petagram of carbon per year released from deadwood globally, with 93 per cent originating from tropical forests. Globally, the net effect of insects may account for 29 per cent of the carbon flux from deadwood, which suggests a functional importance of insects in the decomposition of deadwood and the carbon cycle.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2021
Subjects:	A ATREE Publications > G Journal Papers
Divisions:	SM Sehgal Foundation Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation > Biodiversity Monitoring and Conservation Planning
Depositing User:	Ms Suchithra R
Date Deposited:	25 Nov 2025 04:16
Last Modified:	25 Nov 2025 04:16
URI:	http://archives.atree.org/id/eprint/991

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