Global change has dramatic impacts on grassland diversity. However, little is known about how fast species can adapt to these changes and how this affects their responses to global change. To close this gap, we performed a common garden experiment testing whether plant responses to global change are influenced by the selection history of the plants and the conditioning history of soil at different levels of plant diversity. Therefore, we collected seeds and took soil...

Aim Nutrient enrichment is associated with plant invasions and biodiversity loss. Functional trait advantages may predict the ascendancy of invasive plants following nutrient enrichment but this is rarely tested. Here, we investigate 1) whether dominant native and non-native plants differ in important morphological and physiological leaf traits, 2) how their traits respond to nutrient addition, and 3) whether responses are consistent across functional groups. Location Australia, Europe, North America and South Africa Time period 2007...

Plants are subject to tradeoffs among growth strategies such that adaptations for optimal growth in one condition can preclude optimal growth in another. Thus, we hypothesized that the response of plant species abundance to one global change treatment would relate inversely to the response to a second treatment, particularly for treatment combinations that accentuate distinct traits. To address this hypothesis, we examined plant species abundances in 39 global change experiments manipulating CO2, nitrogen, phosphorus, water,...