Wild ungulates and cattle have different effects on litter decomposition as revealed by fecal addition in a Northeast Asian temperate forest

We conducted litter decomposition experiments on 30 long-term large herbivore exclusion plots from July 2022 to October 2023 in Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park(NTLNP), which is situated in the northern section of Jilin Province in China and borders North Korea to the southwest and the southwest-most region of Primorsky Krai in Russia. The rate of decomposition of leaf litter was measured using the litterbag method.

We placed 12 litterbags within each enclosure on July 15–17, 2022: 4 bags of leaf litter (10 g of leaves per litterbag), 4 bags of sika deer feces and litter mixture (5 g of deer feces + 5 g of leaves), and 4 bags of cattle feces and litter mixture (5 g of cattle feces + 5 g of leaves).All analyses were performed in R 4.3.2 (R Development Core Team)