Plant Regeneration Trait Syndromes, Tradeoffs, and Linkages to Adult Abundance for Native and Exotic Grassland Plants.

ABSTRACT: Recruitment is the most sensitive plant life stage to environmental filters. Yet, most research linking functional traits to environmental filters has focused on adult plants with little known about early plant traits, their interactions with environmental filters, or their relation to species abundance. Likewise, how such relationships might vary between native and exotic species or influence plant invasion outcomes is unclear. We quantified regeneration traits for 12 native and 12 exotic (naturalized and invasive) forbs and evaluated trait relationships and their associations with species abundance across an environmental gradient in semi-arid grasslands. Species differentiated along two orthogonal trait axes suggestive of two distinct trait syndromes. The first trait syndrome, likely as

SUBMITTER: Slate ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12422753 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature