Accurate prediction of community assembly is a central goal in ecology but is challenging because assembly is governed by numerous mechanisms. Few theoretical models explicitly incorporate or test multiple mechanisms at once. We empirically tested the predictive performance of a plant community assembly model built using all possible combinations of four ‘mechanisms’ (soil resource competition, dispersal and colonisation, spat...

Darwin's theory of natural selection provides two seemingly contradictory hypotheses for explaining the success of biological invasions: (1) the pre‐adaptation hypothesis posits that introduced species that are closely related to native species will be more likely to succeed due to shared advantageous characteristics; (2) the limiting similarity hypothesis posits that invaders that are more similar to resident species will be...

Our understanding of marine ecosystems and ability to manage them sustainably has come from multidisciplinary observations made repeatedly over long periods of time. These long‐term ecosystem observations depend on the capabilities of large research vessels, which play an essential role in the collection of global ocean observations. Research vessels serve as large, stable platforms for collecting high volume samples from the...

Major changes are occurring across the North Atlantic climate system, including in the atmosphere, ocean and cryosphere, and many observed changes are unprecedented in instrumental records. As the changes in the North Atlantic directly affect the climate and air quality of the surrounding continents, it is important to fully understand how and why the changes are taking place, not least to predict how the region will change in...