The understorey harbours a substantial part of vascular plant diversity in temperate forests
and plays an important functional role, affecting ecosystem processes such as nutrient
cycling and overstorey regeneration. Global change, however, is putting these understorey
communities on trajectories of change, potentially altering and reducing their functioning in
the future. Developing mitigation strategies to safeguard the diversity and functioning of
temperate forests in the future is challenging and requires improved predictive capacity …