Considerable resources are spent worldwide to manage invasive plant species and
preserve the integrity and diversity of native or restored habitats and communities. Here, we …

Characterizing variation in plant functional traits is often key to understanding community‐
level processes and predicting ecosystem responses to environmental change. Trait‐based …

Ecologists have worked to ascribe function to the variation found in plant populations,
communities and ecosystems across environments for at least the past century. The vast …

Plant traits are useful for predicting how species may respond to environmental change
and/or influence ecosystem properties. Understanding the extent to which traits vary within …

Background Functional trait-based ecological research has been instrumental in advancing
our understanding of environmental changes. It is still, however, unclear how the functional …

Background Phosphorus (P) is an essential macronutrient required for plant metabolism and
growth. Its acquisition by plants depends on the availability of dissolved P in the rhizosphere …

Many studies of community assembly focus on a single ontogenetic stage (typically adults)
when trying to infer assembly processes from patterns of biodiversity. This focus ignores the …

Trait‐based restoration strategies are gaining significant attention in the scientific
community. A recent article in Restoration Ecology by Merchant et al. outlined four reasons …

Plant resource allocation strategies are thought to be largely a consequence of changing
abiotic conditions and evolutionary history. However, biotic interactions also influence how a …

Intraspecific trait variability has been identified as a possible reason why the trait-based
approach in functional ecology is not as predictive as we would like. However, sources of …