The source of microbial C has little impact on soil organic matter stabilisation in forest ecosystems.

The source of microbial C is thought to impact its stability in soil due to variations in cellular biochemistry. It has been hypothesised that a fungal-dominated community stabilises more C than a bacterial-dominated community, in part due to chemical recalcitrance of their non-living biomass, particularly cell wall components and pigments. We compared the turnover of (13)C-labelled (99.