Herbivores are important ecosystem drivers in both above‐ and belowground ecosystems. Despite their importance, studies of herbivores often focus on the effects of individual species, potentially missing the effects of herbivore diversity. Here we examine how orthopteran herbivore species and functional (i.e., diet) diversity interact with nutrient availability to shape above‐ and belowground ecosystems

Forest succession is a key driver of plant communities and understanding succession is central to forest restoration. Currently, the information on the response of the microbial community to the forest succession process, however, is limited. In the present study, we investigated the dynamics of the soil bacterial community in three forest types undergoing succession caused by pine wilt disease, representing

Understanding how community composition of service‐providing organisms affects ecosystem functioning is a key challenge in ecology. Although it has been proposed that taxonomic diversity and functional traits mediate this relationship, how several facets of community structure affect the delivery of key ecosystem services remains to be explored. In this study, we investigated how abundance, taxonomic

Global warming is often predicted to increase damage to plants through direct effects on insect herbivores. However, the indirect impacts of rising temperatures on herbivores, mediated through interactions with their biotic environment, could dampen these effects. Using a series of reciprocal density experiments with gravid females and developing nymphs, we examined interspecific competition between

Disentangling the effect of multiple ecological processes on plant trait composition is complicated by the fact that both top‐down and bottom‐up processes may affect similar traits. We examined the interacting role of resource variation and vole herbivory on functional trait patterns in an annual California grassland. We manipulated vole herbivory via exclosures at eight grassland sites along a steep

How plants allocate their biomass to different organs is essential to understanding plant adaptations and distributions. Overall, biomass allocation may follow fixed rules across taxa. They are also likely to exhibit substantial departure from these rules during ontogeny and in response to particular limiting factors to optimize their growth and maximize their survival. However, how plants adjust their

1. Positive biotic interactions between plant species may strongly affect species and community level patterns, but the processes through which benefactor species alter the performance of interacting species (via, for example, beneficial mechanisms like resource provisioning) are still inadequately understood. One poorly explored potential explanation is that plant‐plant facilitation could occur through

To fulfill their growth and reproductive functions, trees develop a three‐dimensional structure that is subject to both internal and external constraints. This is reflected by the unique architecture of each individual at a given time. Addressing the crown dimensions and topological structure of large tropical trees is challenging considering their complexity, size and longevity. Terrestrial laser

1. Degree of reproductive synchronization in prey is hypothesized as a predator defense strategy reducing prey risk via predator satiation or predator avoidance. Species with precocial young, especially those exposed to specialist predators, should be highly synchronous to satiate predators (predator satiation hypothesis), while prey with nonprecocial (i.e., altricial) young, especially those exposed

The temperature‐size rule (TSR) describes the inverse relationship between organism size and environmental temperature in uni‐ and multicellular species. Despite the TSR being widespread, the mechanisms for shrinking body size with warming remain elusive.

In Jäschke, Heberling, and Wesche (2020), the authors identified an error in Figure 3 after publication. The authors have determined that Figures 3(d) functional richness and 3(e) functional divergence were wrongly plotted due to a small error in the R‐code. The authors regret this error. This error does not affect the figure caption or the main text of the article. The corrected figure is reproduced

Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of droughts, with potential impacts on carbon (C) release from soil (i.e., soil respiration, Rs). Although numerous studies have investigated drought‐induced changes in Rs, how roots and the soil microbial community regulate responses of Rs to drought remains unclear. We conducted a 4‐year field experiment (2014 ‐ 2017) with three treatments

The vast majority of terrestrial plants exchange nutrients with fungal partners forming different mycorrhizal types. The minority of plants considered as non‐mycorrhizal, however, are not necessarily free of any fungi, but are frequently colonized by elusive fungal endophytes, such as dark septate endophytes (DSE) or fine root endophytes (FRE). While a functional role of FRE in improvement of nutrient

Bird migration has always been fascinating. Where do birds go in winter? How fast do they travel? Do they fly non‐stop or break their journeys into segments? And what can possibly favour travelling thousands of kilometres to stay 6 weeks at high latitude to raise offspring and then return to the tropics for the rest of the year? Many of these questions were unanswerable until recently when we entered

Pruitt, J. N., Cote, J., & Ferrari, M. C. O. (2012). Behavioural trait variants in a habitat‐forming species dictate the nature of its interactions with and among heterospecifics. Functional Ecology, 26, 29–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2011.01922.x Concerns have been raised about the validity of the data underlying Pruitt, Cote, and Ferrari (2012). These concerns are currently being evaluated

Pruitt, J. N. and Husak, J. F. (2010). Context‐dependent running speed in funnel‐web spiders from divergent populations. Functional Ecology, 24, 165–171. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2009.01623.x Concerns have been raised about the validity of the data underlying Pruitt and Husak (2010). These concerns are currently being evaluated by The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the institution at

Pruitt, J. N. (2010). Differential selection on sprint speed and ad libitum feeding behaviour in active vs. sit‐and‐wait foraging spiders. Functional Ecology, 24, 392–399. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2009.01655.x Concerns have been raised about the validity of the data underlying Pruitt (2010). These concerns are currently being evaluated by The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the institution

In many terrestrial ecosystems earthworms operate at the interface between plants and soil. As ecosystem engineers, they affect key ecosystem functions such as decomposition, nutrient cycling and bioturbation. Their incidence and abundance depends on several soil properties, yet simultaneously they also impact soil properties themselves. The existence of a positive feedback loop in which earthworm

For a pathogen to successfully transmit among hosts and become established in the population, it must ‘run the gauntlet’ of defences within individual hosts (Ewald, 1983; Handel & Rohani, 2015; van Baalen & Sabelis, 1995). Intuitively, the strong connections between within‐host infection dynamics and transmission success make sense. Mathematical models and the few empirical studies (e.g. helminths