Aim Environmental change affects metacommunity structure both directly—via abiotic factors and dispersal that affect species occurrence—and indirectly—via complex interactions among co‐occurring species. We examined how the three main metacommunity factors—environmental conditions, spatial processes and species associations—affect metacommunity structure and whether responses are predictable in real‐world systems by using nove...

The roots of the majority of tree species are associated with either arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) or ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi. The absorptive roots of tree species also vary widely in their diameter. The linkages between root thickness, mycorrhiza type and nutrient foraging are poorly understood. We conducted a large root ingrowth experiment in the field to investigate how absorptive roots of varying thickness and their assoc...

Aims Climate change can substantially alter ecological communities. However, we hypothesized that, even if novel communities emerge, those communities may not be novel in terms of functional composition. To infer the processes associated with rising temperatures, we evaluated elevational taxonomic/functional turnover of plant and invertebrate communities. Because climate change interacts synergistically with other environmenta...

Aim Spatial patterns in biodiversity along environmental gradients are a central theme in ecology. However, the ways in which local assembly processes control changes in species turnover (β‐diversity) along broader gradients have been less well documented. In this study, we aimed to elucidate factors and processes governing the altitudinal gradients in the β‐diversity of woody plants and ground‐dwelling oribatid mites. Locatio...