To separate the effects of the abiotic and biotic soil components on plant growth, researchers can compare plants grown in sterilised and unsterilised soil (unsterilised soil approach). However, using this approach can be problematic if the abiotic component of the soil is affected by the sterilisation treatment, which is often the case. We aimed to determine how often this approach is used by plant-soil interaction studies an...

“Least‐cost theory” posits that C 3 plants should balance rates of photosynthetic water loss and carboxylation in relation to the relative acquisition and maintenance costs of resources required for these activities. Here we investigated the dependency of photosynthetic traits on climate and soil properties using a new Australia‐wide trait dataset spanning 528 species from 67 sites. We tested the hypotheses that plants on rela...

Tree mortality during global‐change‐type drought is usually attributed to xylem dysfunction, but as climate change increases the frequency of extreme heat events, it is necessary to better understand the interactive role of heat stress. We hypothesized that some drought‐stressed plants paradoxically open stomata in heatwaves to prevent leaves from critically overheating. We experimentally imposed heat (>40°C) and drought stres...

Motivation The Global Urban Tree Inventory (GUTI) is a compilation of datasets on tree species found in cities and towns throughout the world. GUTI data can be used to address a diverse range of theoretical and applied investigations related to species’ biogeography and distribution, ecological and physiological tolerance to climatic, biophysical and environmental parameters, as well as plant conservation and invasion. Main ty...

Invasive alien plant species threaten native biodiversity, disrupt ecosystem functions and can cause large economic damage. Plant invasions have been predicted to further increase under ongoing global environmental change. Numerous case studies have compared the performance of invasive and native plant species in response to global environmental change components (i.e. changes in mean levels of precipitation, temperature, atmo...

The ability to predict which alien plants will transition from naturalized to invasive prior to their introduction to novel regions is a key goal for conservation and has the potential to increase the efficacy of weed risk assessment (WRA). However, multiple factors contribute to plant invasion success (e.g., functional traits, range characteristics, residence time, phylogeny), and they all must be taken into account simultane...

Plant traits – the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs – determine how primary producers respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity. Trait data thus represent the raw material for a wide range of research from evol...

Aim To provide the first global quantification of the slope and shape of the latitudinal gradient in seed mass, and to determine whether global patterns in seed mass are best explained by growth form, vegetation type, seed dispersal syndrome, or net primary productivity (NPP). Location Global. Methods We collected seed mass data for 11,481 species × site combinations from around the world. We used regression to describe the la...