Table 3.

ANOVA indicating the statistical significance of factors that influence decomposition of leaf litter in litter mixtures

	df	After 7 months of incubation				After 14 months of incubation
		MS	F	P	r 2	MS	F	P	r 2
Species (S)	7	25,028	1,002.3	<0.00001	0.860	20,321	481.2	<0.0001	0.670
Forest type (F)	1	3,650	146.1	<0.00001	0.018	19,851	470.1	<0.0001	0.094
Other species (O)	7	41	1.6	0.1203	0.001	231	5.5	<0.0001	0.008
S × F	7	25	1.0	0.4283	0.001	131	3.1	0.003	0.004
S × O	49	31	1.2	0.1370	0.007	54	1.3	0.099	0.012
O × F	7	33	1.3	0.2460	0.001	55	1.3	0.25	0.002
S × O × F	49	32	1.2	0.0921	0.008	48	1.1	0.25	0.011
Blocking term	14	69	2.76	0.0005	0.005	428	10.1	<0.0001	0.028
Residualsa	808/858	25				42

The explanatory variables were the identity of the species measured (Species), the forest type (Forest), the identity of the other species in the mixture (Other species), and a blocking term reflecting the hierarchical sampling design. Statistically significant effects are shown in bold. The relative importance of a factor is expressed as its sum of squares as a proportion of the total sum of squares (r ²)

^aDifferent df for the two incubation periods because the numbers of bags not recovered from the field differed between collections