Plants face a fundamental trade‐off between acquiring resources for growth or interspecific competition and simultaneously investing in anti‐consumer defenses. These selective pressures shape species' life history strategies and promote stable coexistence. However, the specific roles of distinct consumer groups, particularly the often‐overlooked oomycetes, in driving growth–defense trade‐offs and sustaining plant diversity rem...

Both bottom‐up and top‐down processes modulate plant communities. Fungal and oomycete pathogens are most common in global grasslands, and due to differences in their physiology, function, host range, and life cycles, they may differentially affect plants (in both intensity and direction). However, how fungal and oomycete pathogens regulate bottom‐up and top‐down effects on plant community biomass remains unclear. To this end,...