It has become clear that plants can create soils that affect subsequent plant growth. However, because plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) are typically measured in monoculture experiments, it remains unclear to what extent PSFs affect plant growth in communities. Here we used data from a factorial PSF experiment to predict the biomass of 12 species grown in 162 plant community combinations. Five diffe...

Fire has a major impact on the structure and function of many ecosystems globally. Pyrodiversity, the diversity of fires within a region (where diversity is based on fire characteristics such as extent, severity, and frequency), has been hypothesized to promote biodiversity, but changing climate and land management practices have eroded pyrodiversity. To assess whether changes in pyrodiversity ...

Soil microbial communities play an important role in plant health and soil quality. Researchers have developed a wide range of methods for studying the structure, diversity, and activity of microbes to better understand soil biology and plant-microbe interactions. Functional microbiological analyses of the rhizosphere have given new insights into the role of microbial communities in plant nutri...

The functional trait-based approach is increasingly used to predict responses of ecological communities to disturbances, but most studies target a single taxonomic group. Here, we assessed the resilience of a forest ecosystem to an overabundant herbivore population by assessing changes in 19 functional traits for plant, 13 traits for ground beetle and 16 traits for songbird communities after si...

This paper reports on the progress in developing a field reference for the identification, description, and assessment of rare ecosystems in British Columbia for the Conservation Data Centre (CDC). To this end, a review of plant community classification concepts is provided. Concepts discussed include (1) the relationship between the plant community and the plant association, (2) vegetation cla...

Recent studies have shown that accounting for intraspecific trait variation (ITV) may better address major questions in community ecology. However, a general picture of the relative extent of ITV compared to interspecific trait variation in plant communities is still missing. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of the relative extent of ITV within and among plant communities worldwide, using a d...

We measured aboveground plant biomass and soil inorganic nitrogen pools in a biodiversity experiment in northern Sweden, with plant species richness ranging from 1 to 12 species. In general, biomass increased and nitrate pools decreased with increasing species richness. Transgressive overyielding of mixed plant communities compared to the most productive of the corresponding monocultures occurr...

Soil microbes play a key role in controlling ecosystem functions and providing ecosystem services. Yet, microbial communities in urban green space soils remain poorly characterized. Here we compared soil microbial communities in 41 urban parks of (i) divergent plant functional types (evergreen trees, deciduous trees and lawn) and (ii) different ages (constructed 10, ∼50 and >100 years ago). The...

Adler et al. (Reports, 23 September 2011, p. 1750) analyzed the standardized sampling data from 48 herbaceous-dominated plant communities and concluded that "Productivity is a poor predictor of plant species richness" at fine-scale. However, their method was biased toward site-number-dominated plant communities. They also failed to provide enough data for regional analysis and detailed informat...

BACKGROUND Invasions of natural communities by non-indigenous species are currently rated as one of the most important global-scale threats to biodiversity. Biodiversity itself is known to reduce invasions and increase stability. Disturbances by ecosystem engineers affect the distribution, establishment, and abundance of species but this has been ignored in studies on diversity-invasibility rel...