Current interest and debate on pollen-assemblage richness as a proxy for past plant
richness have prompted us to review recent developments in assessing whether modern …

Ecological theory and nature conservation have traditionally relied solely on observed local
diversity. In this review, we recommend including those species that are absent from an …

The subdiscipline of 'community phylogenetics' is rapidly growing and influencing thinking
regarding community assembly. In particular, phylogenetic dispersion of co‐occurring …

The mechanisms that shape plant diversity along resource gradients remain unresolved
because competing theories have been evaluated in isolation. By testing multiple theories …

Co‐existence theories fail to adequately explain observed community patterns (diversity and
composition) because they mainly address local extinctions. For a more complete …

Resolving contingencies in community ecology requires comparative studies of local
communities along broad-scale environmental gradients and in different biogeographic …

Some of the most species-rich plant communities occur on ancient, strongly weathered soils,
whereas those on recently developed soils tend to be less diverse. Mechanisms underlying …

Isolation is a driving factor of species richness and other island community attributes. Most
empirical studies have investigated the effect of isolation measured as distance to the …

Aims: The stress‐gradient hypothesis (SGH) predicts how plant interactions change along
environmental stress gradients. We tested the SGH in an aridity gradient, where support for …

Large-scale loss and fragmentation of natural habitats is one of the critical factors in the
global decline of biodiversity. Habitat quality is the foundation for supporting biodiversity, so …