Plant ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using a dataset that included 341,846 species in 391 angiosperm floras worldwide, this study finds that the global phylogenetic structure of angiosperms shows clear and meaningful relationships with environmental factors and that current climatic variables have the highest predictive power for phylogenetic metrics reflecting recent evolutionary relationships.

    • Hong Qian
    • , Shenhua Qian
    •  & Michael Kessler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant antagonists may disrupt the allocation of carbon resources from plants to mutualistic microorganisms. Here, the authors report how plants attacked by cyst nematodes and aphids maintain carbon transfer to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi through fatty acid transfer whilst the limiting the loss of sugars.

    • C. A. Bell
    • , E. Magkourilou
    •  & K. J. Field

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Factors behind interspecific variation in masting are unclear. Here, the authors show that, in 517 species of terrestrial perennial plants, masting is more frequent in species that have high stem tissue density, suggesting that stronger stress resistance may buffer against missed reproductive opportunities.

    • Valentin Journé
    • , Andrew Hacket-Pain
    •  & Michał Bogdziewicz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Energetic tradeoffs help determine where individual traits confer a competitive advantage. Here, the authors grow ten Eucalyptus species at four common gardens along a rainfall gradient and show that 50 traits mostly vary as predicted, and that species in their native ranges generally outperform others in height growth.

    • Duncan D. Smith
    • , Mark A. Adams
    •  & Thomas J. Givnish

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relationship between stomatal traits and environmental drivers across plant communities has important implications for ecosystem fluxes. Here, the authors explore community-scale stomatal trait-environment relationships, which are important for predicting future water and carbon cycles.

    • Congcong Liu
    • , Lawren Sack
    •  & Guirui Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Arctic tundra is a relatively young biome. Here, the authors sample 32 angiosperm clades encompassing 3600+ species and find that both long-term dispersal and in situ speciation may have contributed to Arctic flora assembly, in association with landscape, climate and sea-level changes since the early Late Miocene.

    • Jun Zhang
    • , Xiao-Qian Li
    •  & Wei Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether trait trade-offs and optimality principles observed at the individual level scale up to the ecosystem level. Here, the authors show that plant trait coordination principles also predict patterns between community-level traits and ecosystem-scale processes.

    • Ulisse Gomarasca
    • , Mirco Migliavacca
    •  & Markus Reichstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biodiversity often increases the functioning and productivity of ecosystems or communities. This work shows that such a positive diversity effect, namely overyielding in mixtures of two divergent Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, can be genetically mapped and resolved to a single gene.

    • Samuel E. Wuest
    • , Lukas Schulz
    •  & Pascal A. Niklaus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Population growth in China has increased the demand for food. Combining data-driven projections with field experiments, Luo et al. find that China can achieve self-sufficiency in maize production by 2030 implementation of optimal planting density and management without expanding cropping areas.

    • Ning Luo
    • , Qingfeng Meng
    •  & Pu Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stomatal conductance is an important plant ecophysiological trait and a common parameter in earth system models. This global meta-analysis shows how CO2, warming and other global change factors affect stomatal conductance individually and interactively.

    • Xingyun Liang
    • , Defu Wang
    •  & David S. Ellsworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Volatiles from herbivore-infested plants can function as chemical warning signals to neighbouring plants. Here the authors show that a tomato UDP-glycosyltransferase can convert a volatile signal emitted by infested plants to promote plant defense.

    • Koichi Sugimoto
    • , Eiichiro Ono
    •  & Junji Takabayashi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change and earlier snowmelt could potentially extend the growing season for alpine grassland plants. Here, the authors combine field and chamber controlled experiments to show that extending the summer period did not result in prolonged root and leaf growth.

    • Patrick Möhl
    • , Raphael S. von Büren
    •  & Erika Hiltbrunner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Leaf functional traits are increasingly used as proxies for plant functions. Here, the authors show that leaf water affects other leaf traits and is a better predictor of whole-leaf photosynthesis and leaf area than leaf nitrogen or phosphorus content.

    • Zhiqiang Wang
    • , Heng Huang
    •  & Ian J. Wright

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global patterns of regional plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether they hold for local communities is debated. This study created multi-grain global maps of alpha diversity for vascular plants to provide a nuanced understanding of plant diversity hotspots and improve predictions of global change effects on biodiversity.

    • Francesco Maria Sabatini
    • , Borja Jiménez-Alfaro
    •  & Helge Bruelheide

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using experimental communities of grassland species, this study shows that drought-exposure history can accelerate recovery from subsequent drought through increased niche complementarity between species. This transgenerational effect may enhance the sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in a future with more frequent droughts.

    • Yuxin Chen
    • , Anja Vogel
    •  & Bernhard Schmid

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using a field experiment, this study shows that both lowland and alpine plant species experience greater competitive effects and a reduced ability to coexist towards their elevation range edges due to increased niche overlap and competitive inequality. These findings suggest competition helps set both lower and upper elevation range limits.

    • Shengman Lyu
    •  & Jake M. Alexander

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pollen can be a vehicle for viral spread among plants. Here, Fetters et al. apply viral metagenomics to characterize the pollen virome of a diverse set of wild plants, find known and previously un-known viruses and show that wild plant species harbor more viruses when surrounded by less natural vegetation and when they have traits that promote increased plant-pollinator vector interactions.

    • Andrea M. Fetters
    • , Paul G. Cantalupo
    •  & Tia-Lynn Ashman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest dynamics are monitored at large scales with remote sensing, but individual tree data are necessary for ground-truthing and mechanistic insights. This study on high temporal resolution dendrometer data across Europe reveals that the 2018 heatwave affected tree physiology and growth in unexpected way.

    • Roberto L. Salomón
    • , Richard L. Peters
    •  & Kathy Steppe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increasing rice yield while improving resource use efficiency is of great importance. This study examines cropping systems globally to highlight areas where rice production can be improved by prioritizing R&D strategies.

    • Shen Yuan
    • , Bruce A. Linquist
    •  & Patricio Grassini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether rewetting leads to effective restoration of drained peatlands is unclear. Here the authors analyse a large number of near-natural and rewetted fen peatland sites in Europe, finding persistent differences in plant community composition and ecosystem functioning, and higher variance in the restored sites.

    • J. Kreyling
    • , F. Tanneberger
    •  & G. Jurasinski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships may vary with climate. Here, the authors study relationships of plant and soil microbial diversity with soil nutrient multifunctionality in 130 dryland sites in China, finding a shift towards greater importance of soil microbial diversity in arid conditions.

    • Weigang Hu
    • , Jinzhi Ran
    •  & Jianming Deng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether climate driven phenological shifts of tundra plants are consistent across the plant growing season. Here the authors analyse data from a network of field warming experiments in Arctic and alpine tundra, finding that warming differentially affects the timing and duration of reproductive and vegetative phenology.

    • Courtney G. Collins
    • , Sarah C. Elmendorf
    •  & Katharine N. Suding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The photosynthesis performed by trees makes them an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide, but trees are also sources of the potent greenhouse gas methane. Here the authors find that tree bark in some common lowland species is colonized by methane oxidizing bacteria that can reduce tree methane emissions by ~ 36%.

    • Luke C. Jeffrey
    • , Damien T. Maher
    •  & Scott G. Johnston

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most aerial organs of vascular plants are covered by a waxy cuticle that limits water loss. Here the authors show that the asymmetric architecture of the cuticle creates a polarity gradient to ensure directional movement of water through olive and ivy leaf cuticles and construct bioinspired artificial membranes that mimic cuticle behaviour.

    • Aristotelis Kamtsikakis
    • , Johanna Baales
    •  & Christoph Weder

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The factors that determine whether pathogens co-occur in a host are poorly understood, especially for plant viruses. Here the authors conduct field experiments with the plant Plantago lanceolata and its viruses, showing that viral co-occurrences are driven predominantly by environmental context and host genotype rather than viral interactions.

    • Suvi Sallinen
    • , Anna Norberg
    •  & Anna-Liisa Laine

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many models assume a universal carbon use efficiency across forest biomes, in contrast to assumptions of other process-based models. Here the authors analyse forest production efficiency across a wide range of climates to show a positive relationship with annual temperature and precipitation, indicating that ecosystem models are overestimating forest carbon losses under warming.

    • A. Collalti
    • , A. Ibrom
    •  & I. C. Prentice

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Satellites provide clear evidence of greening trends in the Arctic, but high-resolution pan-Arctic quantification of these trends is lacking. Here the authors analyse high-resolution Landsat data to show widespread greening in the Arctic, and find that greening trends are linked to summer warming overall but not always locally.

    • Logan T. Berner
    • , Richard Massey
    •  & Scott J. Goetz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Floral phenotypes impact interactions between plants and pollinators. Here, the authors show that Moricandia arvensis displays discrete seasonal plasticity in floral phenotype, with large, lilac flowers attracting long-tongued bees in spring and small, rounded, white flowers attracting generalist pollinators in summer.

    • José M. Gómez
    • , Francisco Perfectti
    •  & Rubén Torices

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An insufficient amount of pollen transfer by pollinators (pollen limitation) could reduce plant reproduction in human-impacted landscapes. Here the authors conduct a global meta-analysis and find that pollen limitation is high in urban environments and depends of plant traits such as pollinator dependency.

    • Joanne M. Bennett
    • , Janette A. Steets
    •  & Tia-Lynn Ashman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether rapid global change will lead to unexpected trait combinations. In this global meta-analysis on vascular plants, Cui et al. show that, although within-species responses do not always follow the leaf economic spectrum, the slopes of interspecific trait relationships are robust to rapid environmental change.

    • Erqian Cui
    • , Ensheng Weng
    •  & Jianyang Xia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The flowering regulator FLC shows upregulation and downregulation phases along with long-term past temperature in Arabidopsis halleri. Here, the authors reveal that H3K27me3-mediated chromatin regulation at AhgFLC provides the ability to respond to both the seasonal temperature trends and the perennial life cycle.

    • Haruki Nishio
    • , Diana M. Buzas
    •  & Hiroshi Kudoh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microbes can establish mutualistic interactions with plants and insects. Here, Kim et al. show that Streptomyces bacteria can protect strawberry plants and honeybees from pathogens, can move into the plant vascular tissue from soil and from flowers, and are transferred among flowers by the pollinators.

    • Da-Ran Kim
    • , Gyeongjun Cho
    •  & Youn-Sig Kwak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The response of traits and their plasticity to different environments within plant communities is incompletely understood. Here, the authors use field experiments under two climatic conditions to describe the dynamic relationship between ten annual plant species in association with 19 functional traits.

    • Ignacio M. Pérez-Ramos
    • , Luis Matías
    •  & Óscar Godoy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Leaf-feeding insect microbiomes could be influenced by the soil, the plant, or a product of the two. Here, the authors conduct a series of experiments to show that an herbivorous insect predominantly acquires its microbiome from the soil rather than the plant, and that these insect microbiomes reflect soil legacies of earlier growing plants.

    • S. Emilia Hannula
    • , Feng Zhu
    •  & T. Martijn Bezemer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    East Asia contains “relict” plant species that persist under narrow climatic conditions after once having wider distributions. Here, using distribution records coupled with ecological niche models, the authors identify long-term stable refugia possessing past, current and future climatic suitability favoring ancient plant lineages.

    • Cindy Q. Tang
    • , Tetsuya Matsui
    •  & Jordi López-Pujol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Can floral phenotype predict the most influential species for maintaining plant–pollinator communities? Here, Kantsa et al. develop a methodology for trait-based analysis, revealing the critical role of floral scent, and floral colour as perceived by insects, in shaping visitation networks.

    • Aphrodite Kantsa
    • , Robert A. Raguso
    •  & Theodora Petanidou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been suggested that tree phenology may be regulated by climatic oscillations. Here, Detto et al. present a 30 year tropical forest dataset that suggests leaf and fruit production is coordinated with ENSO cycles, with greater leaf fall observed prior to El Niño followed by greater seed production.

    • Matteo Detto
    • , S. Joseph Wright
    •  & Helene C. Muller-Landau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Domestication reduces genetic diversity and constrains crop improvement. Here the authors identify factors that shaped species diversity in the wild progenitors of chickpea, and produce wild introgression populations that increase diversity for breeding by ~100-fold, including traits of agronomic relevance.

    • Eric J.B. von Wettberg
    • , Peter L. Chang
    •  & Douglas R. Cook

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plants may respond to light competition by growing upwards, via physiological changes that maximise performance under low light, or by growing laterally. Here Gruntman et al. show that the light-competition scenario determines the strategy employed by the clonal plant Potentilla reptans.

    • Michal Gruntman
    • , Dorothee Groß
    •  & Katja Tielbörger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tree branches follow allometric scalings between length, thickness and dry mass. Here, Eloy and colleagues develop a functional-structural model that shows how such allometries in tree architecture can emerge through evolution as a result of competition for light, wind biomechanics, and wind sensing.

    • Christophe Eloy
    • , Meriem Fournier
    •  & Bruno Moulia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fully quantifying the influence of vegetation on atmospheric chemistry remains challenging. Here, the authors show that forest canopy shading and turbulence significantly modify air pollution throughout the atmospheric boundary layer, and must be taken into account in models of the atmosphere.

    • P. A. Makar
    • , R. M. Staebler
    •  & Q. Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria (rhizobia) aids the growth of many legume species, but may also restrict their ability to colonize new regions lacking suitable rhizobia. Here, the authors show that symbiotic legumes are indeed less likely to become established in new regions than their non-symbiotic relatives.

    • Anna K. Simonsen
    • , Russell Dinnage
    •  & Peter H. Thrall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pollinators are thought to be a driver of plant diversification, but their effects are difficult to disentangle from those of other biotic and abiotic factors. Here, the authors let plants evolve under different pollination regimes and show rapid and divergent evolution of plant height, floral traits and mating system.

    • Daniel D. L. Gervasi
    •  & Florian P Schiestl

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