Disturbances from rodent engineering and human activities profoundly impact ecosystem structure and functioning. Whilst we know that disturbances modulate plant communities, comprehending the mechanisms through which rodent and human disturbances influence the functional trait diversity and trait composition of plant communities is important to allow projecting future changes and to enable informed decisions in response to cha...

Due to their limited dispersal ability, fossorial species with predominantly belowground activity usually show increased levels of population subdivision across relatively small spatial scales. This may be exacerbated in harsh mountain ecosystems, where landscape geomorphology limits species' dispersal ability and leads to small effective population sizes, making species relatively vulnerable to environmental change. To better...

With open‐access publishing authors often pay an article processing charge and subsequently their article is freely available online. These charges are beyond the reach of most African academics. Thus, the trend towards open‐access publishing will shift the business model from a pay‐wall model, where access to literature is limited, to a pay‐to‐publish one, where African scholars cannot afford to publish. We explore the costs...