In the context of a recent massive increase in research on plant root functions and their
impact on the environment, root ecologists currently face many important challenges to keep …

Background The potential benefits of intercropping are manifold and have been repeatedly
demonstrated. Intercropping has the potential to create more productive and resilient …

Increasing atmospheric nitrogen deposition can influence food production, environmental
quality and climate change from the regional to global scales. As the largest developing …

Soil net nitrogen mineralization rate (Nmin), which is critical for soil nitrogen availability and
plant growth, is thought to be primarily controlled by climate and soil physical and/or …

Evidence suggests that biodiversity supports ecosystem functioning. Yet, the mechanisms
driving this relationship remain unclear. Complementarity is one common explanation for …

Niche breadth is a unifying concept spanning diverse aspects of ecology, evolution, and
conservation biology. Niche breadth usually refers to the diversity of resources used or …

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 …

Deciphering the mechanisms that link biodiversity with ecosystem functions is critical to
understanding the consequences of changes in biodiversity. The hypothesis that …

Despite being recognized as a promoter of diversity and a condition for local coexistence
decades ago, the importance of intraspecific variance has been neglected over time in …

Provisioning services, such as the production of food, feed, and fiber, have always been the
main focus of agriculture. Since the 1950s, intensive cropping systems based on the …