Since Baker’s attempt to characterize the ‘ideal weed’ over 50 years ago, ecologists have sought to identify features of species that predict invasiveness. Several of Baker’s ‘ideal weed’ traits are well studied, and we now understand that many traits can facilitate different components of the invasion process, such as dispersal traits promoting transport or selfing enabling establishment. However, the effects of traits on inv...

Parasite success typically depends on a close relationship with one or more hosts; therefore, attributes of parasitic infection have the potential to provide indirect details of host natural history and are biologically relevant to animal conservation. Characterization of parasite infections has been useful in delineating host populations and has served as a proxy for assessment of environmental quality. In other cases, the ut...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-021-01376-9

Forests are a significant CO 2 sink. However, CO 2 sequestration in forests is radiatively offset by emissions of nitrous oxide (N 2 O), a potent greenhouse gas, from forest soils. Reforestation, an important strategy for mitigating climate change, has focused on maximizing CO 2 sequestration in plant biomass without integrating N 2 O emissions from soils. Although nitrogen (N)‐fixing trees are often recommended for reforestat...

A central principle in trait‐based ecology is that trait variation has an adaptive value. However, uncertainty over which plant traits influence individual performance across environmental gradients may limit our ability to use traits to infer ecological processes at larger scales. To better understand which traits are linked to performance under different precipitation regimes, we measured above‐ and belowground traits, growt...

Plant traits can be used to understand a range of ecological processes, including competition with invasive species. The extent to which native and invasive species are competing via limiting similarity or trait hierarchies has important implications for the management of invaded communities. We screened 47 native species that co‐occur with Festuca perennis , a dominant invader in California serpentine grassland, for traits pe...

The idea that dominant invasive plant species outperform neighboring native species through higher rates of carbon assimilation and growth is supported by several analyses of global data sets. However, theory suggests that native and invasive species occurring in low‐resource environments will be functionally similar, as environmental factors restrict the range of observed physiological and morphological trait values. We measu...

The leaf economics spectrum (LES) has revolutionized the way many ecologists think about quantifying plant ecological trade‐offs. In particular, the LES has connected a clear functional trade‐off (long‐lived leaves with slow carbon capture vs. short‐lived leaves with fast carbon capture) to a handful of easily measured leaf traits. Building on this work, community ecologists are now able to quickly assess species carbon‐captur...