One of ecology's grand challenges is developing general rules to explain and predict highly
complex systems. Understanding and predicting ecological processes from species' traits …

In focusing on how organisms' generalizable functional properties (traits) interact
mechanistically with environments across spatial scales and levels of biological …

Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait
combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the …

Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been a
core ecological research topic over the past decades. Although a key hypothesis is that the …

One of the most pervasive concepts in the study of community assembly is the metaphor of
the environmental filter, which refers to abiotic factors that prevent the establishment or …

The C sequestration capacity of grassland soils depends on both the net primary production
of the ecosystem that determines the C flows from atmosphere to vegetation and soil, and on …

The environmental filtering hypothesis predicts that the abiotic environment selects species
with similar trait values within communities. Testing this hypothesis along multiple–and …

Phototrophic microbial mats are ideal model systems for ecological and evolutionary
analysis of highly diverse microbial communities. Microbial mats are small-scale, nearly …

Despite their importance, how plant communities and soil microorganisms interact to
determine the capacity of ecosystems to provide multiple functions simultaneously …

Aim More than ever, ecologists seek to understand how species are distributed and have
assembled into communities using the “filtering framework”. This framework is based on the …