Among ecologists, it is widely believed that conservative growth strategies of plants are crucial for sustaining ecosystem stability, while the potential stabilising role of acquisitive strategies has received little attention. We investigated the relationships between plant traits and three stability dimensions—temporal stability, resistance and resilience—using two complementary datasets from drought‐affected semi‐arid grass...

Previous studies have primarily focused on single abrupt shifts; however, the actual ecosystem will experience continuous abrupt shifts (CAS), including different directions shifts (DDS) and same direction shifts (SDS). The patterns and drivers of these CAS remain unclear. We examined the patterns of the DDS and SDS by two vegetation datasets and then tested climate drivers comprising atmospheric temperature (MAT), atmospheric...

Elton's biotic resistance hypothesis, which posits that diverse communities should be more resistant to biological invasions, has received considerable experimental support. However, it remains unclear whether such a negative diversity–invasibility relationship would persist under anthropogenic environmental change. By using the common ragweed ( Ambrosia artemisiifolia ) as a model invader, our 4‐year grassland experiment demo...

The comment by Sánchez‐Tójar et al . (2020, Ecol Lett) questioned the methodology, transparency and conclusion of our study (Ecol Lett, 22, 2019, 1976). The comment has overlooked important evolutionary assumptions in their reanalysis, and the issues raised were in fact dealt with through the peer‐review process. Far from being biased, the key conclusion of our meta‐analysis still stands; transgenerational effects are largely...

Satellite data indicate significant advancement in alpine spring phenology over decades of climate warming, but corresponding field evidence is scarce. It is also unknown whether this advancement results from an earlier shift of phenological events, or enhancement of plant growth under unchanged phenological pattern. By analyzing a 35‐year dataset of seasonal biomass dynamics of a Tibetan alpine grassland, we show that climate...

The adaptive value of transgenerational effects (the ancestor environmental effects on offspring) in changing environments has received much attention in recent years, but the related empirical evidence remains equivocal. Here, we conducted a meta‐analysis summarising 139 experimental studies in plants and animals with 1170 effect sizes to investigate the generality of transgenerational effects across taxa, traits, and environ...

The mechanisms underpinning forest biodiversity‐ecosystem function relationships remain unresolved. Yet, in heterogeneous forests, ecosystem function of different strata could be associated with traits or evolutionary relationships differently. Here, we integrate phylogenies and traits to evaluate the effects of elevational diversity on above‐ground biomass across forest strata and spatial scales. Community‐weighted means of h...

Climate is widely recognised as an important determinant of the latitudinal diversity gradient. However, most existing studies make no distinction between direct and indirect effects of climate, which substantially hinders our understanding of how climate constrains biodiversity globally. Using data from 35 large forest plots, we test hypothesised relationships amongst climate, topography, forest structural attributes (stem ab...

Intra‐specific negative density dependence promotes species coexistence by regulating population sizes. Patterns consistent with such density dependence are frequently reported in diverse tropical tree communities. Empirical evidence demonstrating whether intra‐specific variation is related to these patterns, however, is lacking. The present study addresses this important knowledge gap by genotyping all individuals of a tropic...

Biotic resistance may influence invasion success; however, the relative roles of species richness, functional or phylogenetic distance in predicting invasion success are not fully understood. We used biomass fraction of Chromolaena odorata , an invasive species in tropical and subtropical areas, as a measure of ‘invasion success’ in a series of artificial communities varying in species richness. Communities were constructed us...

Whether plant communities in a given region converge towards a particular stable state during succession has long been debated, but rarely tested at a sufficiently long time scale. By analysing a 50‐year continuous study of post‐agricultural secondary succession in New Jersey, USA , we show that the extent of community convergence varies with the spatial scale and species abundance classes. At the larger field scale, abundance...

Ecological communities often transition from phylogenetic and functional clustering to overdispersion over succession as judged by space‐for‐time substitution studies. Such a pattern has been generally attributed to the increase in competitive exclusion of closely related species with similar traits through time, although colonisation and extinction have rarely been examined. Using 44 years of uninterrupted old‐field successio...

Ecology Letters (2012) Abstract Anthropogenic perturbations may affect biodiversity and ecological stability as well as their relationships. However, diversity–stability patterns and associated mechanisms under human disturbances have rarely been explored. We conducted a 7‐year field experiment examining the effects of mowing and nutrient addition on the diversity and temporal stability of herbaceous plant communities in a tem...