Table 2.

Phylogenetic signals of species traits, and effect of traits with signal on C/N ratio change and microbial biomass, which in turn relate to phylogenetic distance (figure 1). (The left part of the table gives Blomberg's K (which increases with the strength of phylogenetic signal), and associated p-values (which compare observed variances of phylogenetically independent contrasts of a trait to a null expectation). Significant results are shown in bold, and marginally significant results are shown in italic. The right part of the table focuses on the traits that show at least a marginally significant phylogenetic signal and explores how differences of these traits relate to C/N changes and microbial biomass, accounting for trait means, their interaction with trait difference and mass loss (see Material and methods).)

	relationship of trait difference to
			C/N ratio change		microbial biomass
phylogenetic signal traits	K	p-values	t	p	t	p
SLA	0.482	0.062	−3.059	0.018	1.527	0.171
toughness	0.164	0.779
P concentration	0.616	0.019	2.709	0.030	−1.646	0.144
pH	0.315	0.317
Dry matter content	0.128	0.861
lignin concentration	0.916	0.001	−1.386	0.208	−0.498	0.634
N concentration	0.246	0.506
C concentration	0.174	0.683
C/N	0.260	0.417
total phenolics	0.206	0.635
non-tannin phenols	0.489	0.063	−0.435	0.677	−2.310	0.054
tannins	0.149	0.838