Plant belowground organs perform essential functions, including water and nutrient uptake, anchorage, vegetative reproduction and recruitment of mutualistic soil microbiota. Recently, multivariate analyses showed that root traits of species can largely be linked to a ‘conservation’ and a ‘collaboration’ gradient. Here, we tested whether this species-level bidimensional belowground trait space also exists at the community level in grasslands. Furthermore, we tested whether the position of grassland communities in belowground trait space relates to environmental variables....