1. It is controversial whether communities are saturated with species, or have vacant niches. The prevalence of vacant niches and the processes likely to promote their existence are poorly known.
2. We used a process‐based forest gap‐model to simulate plant community dynamics in 11 sites along a climatic gradient across central Europe. We then used hypervolume analyses to study the existence of vacant niches (seen as empty volumes in the trait space of local species pools and communities), and we tested for the effect of abiotic (environmental filtering) and biotic (competition) processes on the functional hypervolumes along the climatic gradient. Last, we performed invasion simulations to assess the invasibility of detected vacant niches.
3. Our results suggest that empty volumes in trait space are common, can arise from both abiotic and biotic processes and are more likely in cold climates. We also showed that most vacant niches are invasible.
4. Synthesis. Our work supports the view that niche space is unsaturated, and that many viable ecological strategies are absent from these forest communities.

中文翻译：

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森林社区集会中空缺但无人入侵的生态位

1. 社区是否充满了物种或是否有空位是有争议的。空位利基的流行和可能促进其生存的过程鲜为人知。
2. 我们使用基于过程的森林缺口模型来模拟整个中欧气候梯度上11个地点的植物群落动态。然后，我们使用超量分析来研究空位生态位的存在（在本地物种库和社区的特征空间中被视为空位），并测试了非生物（环境过滤）和生物（竞争）过程对功能的影响沿气候梯度增加。最后，我们进行了入侵模拟，以评估检测到的空位生态位的入侵性。
3. 我们的结果表明，性状空间中的空体积很普遍，可能来自非生物和生物过程，并且在寒冷气候下更可能出现。我们还表明，大多数空位壁ni都是可入侵的。
4. 综合。我们的工作支持以下观点：生态位空间是不饱和的，并且这些森林群落中缺乏许多可行的生态策略。