Flexible Carbon-Use Efficiency across Litter Types and during Decomposition Partly Compensates Nutrient Imbalances—Results from Analytical Stoichiometric Models

Mathematical models involving explicit representations of microbial processes have been developed to infer microbial community properties from laboratory and field measurements. While this approach has been used to estimate the kinetic constants related to microbial activity, it has not been fully exploited for inference of stoichiometric traits, such as carbon-use efficiency (CUE). Here, a hierarchy of analytically-solvable mass-balance models of litter carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics is developed, to infer decomposer CUE from measured C and N contents during litter decomposition. The models are solved in the phase space – expressing litter remaining N as a function of remaining C – rather than in time, thus focusing on the stoichiometric relations during decomposition rather than the kinetics of degradation. This approach leads to explicit formulas that depend on CUE and other microbial properties, which can then be treated as model parameters and retrieved via nonlinear regression. CUE is either assumed time-invariant or as a function of the fraction of remaining litter C as a substitute for time. In all models, CUE tends to increase with increasing litter N availability across a range of litter types. When temporal trends in CUE are considered, CUE increases during decomposition of N-poor litter cohorts, in which decomposers are initially N-limited, but decreases in N-rich litter possibly due to C-limitation. These patterns of flexible CUE that partly compensate stoichiometric imbalances are robust to moderate shifts in decomposer C:N ratio and hold across wide climatic gradients.