Cover image: A drone photo of the iconic “Red Beach” coastal ecosystem located in Yancheng National Nature Reserve, Jiangsu Province, China. The dominant plant species are Suaeda salsa (red) and Spartina alterniflora (green). The ring-like pattern of Spartina alterniflora may be an indication of strong intra-specific competition that induces mortality of inner-circle individuals. Photograph by Guoyuan Chen. For full details see pages 2268–2287.

Our results provide important insights into the responses of semiarid annual plant communities under a climate change scenario. Experimental rain exclusion consistently decreased diversity (taxonomic and functional) but to a lesser extent than interannual rain patterns, that result in deep diversity losses during drought events but rapid recovery in milder years. This finding suggests a high resilience of these communities, although it also alerts us about the unpredictable consequences that may result from the permanent increase in drought predicted by climate change models in the Mediterranean Basin.

Population-level synchronisation of fruit production is required to generate a more effective plant regeneration. Our findings show that masting enhances seedling recruitment through predator satiation and increased seed dispersal by frugivores. The results provide support for both animal dispersal and predator satiation hypotheses indicating that both mechanisms can operate simultaneously.

Our multispecies experiment shows that soil fauna might help native communities to resist alien plant invasions, but that this effect might be weakened under drought. In other words, soil mesofauna may buffer the negative effects of drought on alien plant invasions.

An experimental approach using four species growing in the same site reveals that demographic costs were more frequently detected in multi-flowered species than in single-flowered ones, which could be due to higher biomass allocation to reproduction and a longer flowering period in the former. This study provides insight into life-history divergence of coexisting species sharing similar niches.

This is the first study that has linked functional traits, decomposability and afterlife effects of the inner and outer bark within the bark quantitatively. We highlight the significance of separating functional traits and ecological consequences of the inner and outer bark in research in bark ecology and deadwood dynamics, rather than erroneously considering bark as a homogeneous tissue. Such research will help to better evaluate the function-oriented contribution of bark to the turnover of forest carbon and biogeochemical cycles from local to global scale.

The study clearly demonstrates that, in addition to vegetative traits, seed traits can substantially contribute to functional structuring of plant communities along environmental gradients. Thus, the ‘hard’ seed traits related to germination and dispersal are critical to detect multiple, complex community assembly rules. Consequently, such traits should be included in core lists of plant traits and, when applicable, be incorporated into analysis of community assembly.

None of our indicators showed evidence of declines in alpha or beta diversity of trees in temperate and boreal forests in Quebec (except for simulations with extremely high forest loss), but we did find temporal turnover in composition. Our results go beyond previous studies by analysing the many different aspects of biodiversity that might change over time, highlighting the need to shift from blanket descriptions of ‘biodiversity loss’ to more nuanced discussions around ‘biodiversity change’.

We analysed the response of oak and beech to mixing along spatial and temporal gradients. Beech generally dominates, but its growth benefited less from mixing in dry years, whereas oak growth was less affected on drier sites. We observed a shift towards complementarity in years of low growth, with mixing becoming even more beneficial to beech, and less detrimental to oak.

Previous temporally heterogeneous experience can benefits plant growth later in life through modulating the expression of plasticity, leading to adaptive meta-plasticity. Studies of meta-plasticity may improve our understanding not only on the importance of variable plasticity in relation to how plants cope with environmental challenges but also on the costs versus benefits of plastic responses and its limits over the long term.

Leaf litter decomposes faster for lianas than trees, despite high variability of traits and decomposition rates within each growth form and overlap between growth forms, and we found no evidence for the complementarity hypothesis. Our study sheds light on the potential role of lianas within brown food webs and their importance on terrestrial biogeochemistry.

We demonstrated that distinct pairs of foothill–alpine populations exhibited similar adaptive responses to elevation providing evidence for parallel local adaptation. This was probably achieved by differential selective pressure at low versus high elevation combined with lack or limited gene flow. Our results provide experimental support for the repeatability of adaptive evolution and highlight the prominent role of natural selection.

Our results indicate that maintaining high level of species diversity may support the buffering of negative effects resulting from climate warming. Furthermore, under climate warming the specific C stock of AM trees can increase, which can potentially promote forest C stock. Taken together, our study suggests that afforestation policies should consider not only tree species diversity to increase forest C stock but also the effects of different tree mycorrhizal types.

Boreal forests are experiencing rapid changes in climate and wildfire severity that may affect species composition and ecosystem C pools. Our results highlight the nuanced interactions among wildfire, landscape position and forest type that will play important roles in shaping future boreal ecosystem C stocks.

Moss canopies showed substantial trait coordination along a main principal components axis driven by trade-offs in carbon, nutrient and water conservation strategies. Along this trait spectrum, traits varied from resource-acquisitive to resource-conservative, in line with resource economics theory. This suggests that trait relationships that are well established for vascular plants can be extended for bryophytes.

Here, we disentangled the relationships between diversity and composition of plants and soil microbes (fungi and bacteria) and ecosystem multifunctionality in subalpine moorlands in northern Japan. Natural variations in plant and microbial community composition, rather than diversity, are essential for sustaining moorland multifunctionality. Furthermore, plant and bacterial β diversity have large effects on the dissimilarity of moorland multifunctionality between communities.

Interactions between diversity, functional traits and yearly climatic conditions can balance survival among species in diverse forests. Thus, planting mixtures of species that differ in functional traits in afforestation projects may lead to a positive feedback loop where biodiversity maintains biodiversity.