Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., what recruits under what) shape the composition, diversity, and structure of plant communities. Despite the huge body of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying recruitment interactions among species, we still know little about the structure of the recruitment networks emerging in ecological communities. Modeling and analyzing the community‐level structure of plant recruitment interactions...

The interplay between top‐down and bottom‐up processes determines ecosystem productivity. Yet, the factors that mediate the balance between these opposing forces remain poorly understood. Furthering this challenge, complex and often cryptic factors like ecosystem engineering and trait‐mediated interactions may play major roles in mediating the outcomes of top‐down and bottom‐up interactions. In semiarid grasslands of northeast...

In 2014, a DNA‐based phylogenetic study confirming the paraphyly of the grass subtribe Sporobolinae proposed the creation of a large monophyletic genus Sporobolus , including (among others) species previously included in the genera Spartina , Calamovilfa , and Sporobolus. Spartina species have contributed substantially (and continue contributing) to our knowledge in multiple disciplines, including ecology, evolutionary biology...