Microbial diversity is generally far higher than plant diversity, but the relationship between microbial diversity and plant diversity remains enigmatic. To shed light on this problem, we examined the diversity of a key guild of root-associated mi...

A better understanding of soil microbial ecology is critical to gaining an understanding of terrestrial carbon (C) cycle–climate change feedbacks. However, current knowledge limits our ability to predict microbial community dynamics in the face of...

Growth and survivorship of Machillus thunbergii saplings in mountain forest are likely to be affected by topographical factors, biotic interactions with neighbouring plants, and individual size. However, such effects are always species- and site-s...

Differences in herbivory among woody species can greatly affect the functioning of forest ecosystems, particularly in species-rich (sub)tropical regions. However, the relative importance of the different plant traits which determine herbivore dama...

Aims Plants with extrafloral nectaries (EFNs) are common in tropical and subtropical habitats and, despite many other arthropods also forage for EFN, most studies solely focused on the defense mutualisms between EFN plants and ants. This ...

Evidence from grassland experiments suggests that a plant community’s phylogenetic diversity (PD) is a strong predictor of ecosystem processes, even stronger than species richness per se. This has, however, never been extended to species-rich fore...