1. The large majority of ‘facilitation studies’ focus on benefactor–beneficiary interactions. However, this may skew our view of the role of facilitation toward systems where it is most conspicuous, and perhaps toward harsh environments where discrete vegetation cover and pattern suggestive of facilitation are more common.
2. Here we argue that a particular benefactor species is not required for facilitation to occur. Where vegetation cover is continuous, the community as a whole can ameliorate the abiotic conditions (community‐scale facilitative effect) and any species from the assembly experiencing stress (strain) could be facilitated. As a consequence, community‐scale facilitative effect might be generally common but often inconspicuous. Whether this community‐scale facilitative effect is influenced by particular characteristics of the vegetation cover is still largely unknown (e.g. biomass, species richness, functional composition and diversity).
3. Expanding our research on facilitation beyond benefactor–beneficiary interactions and considering together the concept of community‐scale effect and strain might be key to progress our understanding of the general role of facilitation for species coexistence, ecosystem function, species distribution or climate change impact.

中文翻译：

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社区规模的影响和压力：超越明显模式的促进

1. 绝大多数“便利化研究”都侧重于恩人与受益人之间的互动。但是，这可能会使我们对简化手续的作用的看法偏向最明显的系统，或者可能针对恶劣的环境，在这些环境中离散的植被覆盖和暗示简化手续的模式更为普遍。
2. 在这里，我们认为促进发生不需要特殊的恩人物种。如果植被覆盖是连续的，则整个社区可以改善非生物环境（社区规模的促进作用），并且可以促进集会中遇到压力（应变）的任何物种。结果，社区规模的促进作用可能通常很普遍，但往往并不明显。这种社区规模的促进作用是否受到植被覆盖特征的影响仍然是未知的（例如生物量，物种丰富度，功能组成和多样性）。
3. 将我们对便利化的研究扩展到受益人与受益者之间的相互作用之外，并一起考虑社区规模效应和压力的概念，可能是增进我们对促进对物种共存，生态系统功能，物种分布或气候变化影响的一般作用的理解的关键。