Litter Controls Earthworm-Mediated Carbon and Nitrogen Transformations in Soil from Temperate Riparian Buffers

Table 4

Mean soil , , MBN, and MBC concentrations in microcosms containing riparian soils. Values are the average of nine sampling dates (). Within a column, values followed by the same letter are not significantly different () according to Dunn-Nemenyi’s procedure for multiple comparisons.

Earthworm treatment	Litter			MBN	MBC
	treatment	(mg kg^−1)	(mg kg^−1)	(mg kg^−1)	(mg kg^−1)
Earthworm	Soybean	20.1 ± 7.2^b	68.0 ± 8.1^b	42.2 ± 7.2^ab	461 ± 44.6^abc
	Reed canarygrass	6.7 ± 3.1^ab	4.5 ± 0.9^a	35.8 ± 3.7^a	442 ± 22.9^ac
	Deciduous mix	1.4 ± 0.2^ab	3.3 ± 0.7^a	36.0 ± 3.7^a	509 ± 24.4^a
	Control	1.1 ± 0.1^a	23.4 ± 0.8^b	19.3 ± 2.0^b	297 ± 15.6^b
Control	Soybean	1.6 ± 0.35^ab	6.9 ± 1.54^a	39.7 ± 4.9^a	503 ± 34.3^abc
	Reed canarygrass	1.2 ± 0.21^a	5.9 ± 1.73^a	46.4 ± 5.7^a	527 ± 35.5^a
	Deciduous mix	1.5 ± 0.35^ab	4.5 ± 1.24^a	38.4 ± 4.5^a	468 ± 28.2^ac
	Control	0.9 ± 0.21^a	21.2 ± 2.34^b	29.8 ± 4.7^ab	315 ± 13.3^bc
Kruskal-Wallis test		>	>	>	>
	Litter	0.0005	<.0001	<.0001	<.0001
	Earthworm	0.1043	0.0209	0.2405	0.6124
	Litter × Earthworm	0.0012	<.0001	0.0004	<.0001