In the era of ongoing global change, it is highly important that restoration efforts lead to
functioning, self‐sustainable ecosystems that are resilient to disturbance and resistant to …

Metacommunity ecology links smaller-scale processes that have been the provenance of
population and community ecology—such as birth-death processes, species interactions …

The outcomes of ecological restoration are notoriously unpredictable, but we have no
general predictive understanding of this contingency. Management decisions can have …

Metapopulation and metacommunity theories occupy a central role in ecology, but can be
difficult to apply to plants. Challenges include whether seed dispersal is sufficient for …

Climate changes and anthropogenic nutrient enrichment widely threaten plant diversity and
ecosystem functions. Understanding the mechanisms governing plant species turnover …

Understanding temporal effects of fire frequency on plant species diversity and vegetation
structure is critical for managing tallgrass prairie (TGP), which occupies a mid‐continental …

Environmental changes are expected to shift the distribution of functional trait values in plant
communities through a combination of species turnover and intraspecific variation. The …

Understanding what constrains the persistence of species in communities is at the heart of
community assembly theory and its application to conserving and enhancing biodiversity …

Plant community assembly outcomes can be contingent upon establishment year (year
effects) due to variations in the environment. Stochastic events such as interannual …

The composition of plant functional traits varies in response to environmental conditions due
to processes of community assembly and species sorting. However, there is a lack of …