1. Once neglected, the role of facilitative interactions in plant communities has received
considerable attention in the last two decades, and is now widely recognized. It is timely to …

Traditional ecological models have focused mainly on competition between plants, but
recent research has shown that some plants benefit from closely associated neighbors, a …

Woody vegetation in grasslands and savannas has increased worldwide over the past 100–
200 years. This phenomenon of “woody plant encroachment”(WPE) has been documented …

Restoring vegetation in degraded ecosystems is an increasingly common practice for
promoting biodiversity and ecological function, but successful implementation is hampered …

The biogeochemical cycles of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are interlinked
by primary production, respiration and decomposition in terrestrial ecosystems. It has been …

The overwhelming taxonomic diversity and metabolic complexity of microorganisms can be
simplified by a life-history classification; copiotrophs grow faster and rely on resource …

Summary 1 The stress‐gradient hypothesis (SGH) predicts that the frequency of facilitative
and competitive interactions will vary inversely across abiotic stress gradients, with …

Most ecologists are not card-carrying members of either individualistic or interdependent
guilds, but our perception of plant community organization, and the way we conduct …

Potential for, and limits to, adaptation to environmental changes are critical for resilience and
risk mitigation. The Mediterranean basin is a mosaic of biodiversity‐rich ecosystems long …

After a millenarian history of overexploitation, most forests in the Mediterranean Basin have
disappeared, leaving many degraded landscapes that have been recolonized by early …