Discriminating between Seasonal and Chemical Variation in Extracellular Enzyme Activities within Two Italian Beech Forests by Means of Multilevel Models

Enzymes play a key-role in organic matter dynamics and strong scientific attention has been given to them lately, especially to their response to climate and substrate chemical composition. Accordingly, in this study, we investigated the effects of chemical composition and seasons on extracellular e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Forests 2018-04, Vol.9 (4), p.219
Main Authors: Fioretto, Antonietta, Innangi, Michele, De Marco, Anna, Menta, Cristina, Papa, Stefania, Pellegrino, Antonella, Virzo De Santo, Amalia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Annual variations
Beech
Carbon
Cellulase
Cellulose
Chemical composition
Chitinase
Climate change
Composition effects
Decomposition
Ecosystems
Enzymatic activity
Enzymes
Forests
Laccase
Leaf litter
Leaves
Lignin
Nitrogen
Organic chemistry
Organic matter
Peroxidase
Precipitation
Seasonal variations
Seasons
Soil layers
Soils
Substrates
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Summary:Enzymes play a key-role in organic matter dynamics and strong scientific attention has been given to them lately, especially to their response to climate and substrate chemical composition. Accordingly, in this study, we investigated the effects of chemical composition and seasons on extracellular enzyme activities (laccase, peroxidase, cellulase, chitinase, acid phosphomonoesterase, and dehydrogenase) by means of multilevel models within two Italian mountain beech forests. We used chemical variables as the fixed part in the model, season as random variation and layers (decomposition continuum for leaf litter and 0–5, 5–15, 15–30, and 30–40 cm for soil) as nested factors within the two forests. Our results showed that seasonal changes explained a higher amount of variance in enzyme activities compared to substrate chemistry in leaf litter, whereas chemical variation had a stronger impact on soil. Moreover, the effect of seasonality and chemistry was in general larger than the differences between forest sites, soils, and litter layers.
ISSN:1999-4907
1999-4907
DOI:10.3390/f9040219