Understanding the mechanisms governing plant community assembly is crucial for developing effective vegetation restoration and management strategies. However, studies examining plant community assembly during the restoration of severely degraded alpine meadows remain limited. In this study, we investigated the processes shaping plant community structure and the associated environmental drivers during the early stages of restoration in severely degraded alpine meadows. Our results showed that differences in plant community composition between mixed sowing and control treatments increased over time. Additionally, both species richness and the dominance of forb species originating from the soil seed bank progressively declined. Across all mixed sowing treatments, plant community assembly showed stochastic assembly patterns, with homogeneous dispersal increasing and ecological drift decreasing annually. By the third year of restoration, heterogeneous selection was more pronounced in the grass + legume mixture than in the grass-only and grass + legume + sedge mixture treatments. Further analyses identified under-canopy photosynthetically active radiation intensity and soil available phosphorus as the key environmental drivers of plant community composition. Therefore, we infer that the stochastic assembly observed after mixed sowing arises from the counterbalancing effects of environmental filtering and niche differentiation. This study highlights that reducing soil nutrient availability to limit the dominance of upper-layer plant communities is crucial for maintaining plant species diversity during the early stages of alpine meadow restoration. Overall, our findings provide valuable insights for improving vegetation restoration strategies in degraded alpine grasslands.

Mycorrhizal symbioses are critical for plant population and community dynamics, yet their role in mediating plant geographic spread under increasing anthropogenic pressure remains poorly understood. Here, we compiled geographic distribution and mycorrhizal information for 8,791 vascular plant species across China, and investigated how plant mycorrhizal strategies interact with human footprint to shape the extent to which species fill their potential ranges across species and space. We found that anthropogenic activities significantly affected range filling of arbuscular mycorrhizal plants, disproportionately reducing range filling of narrow-ranged species while benefiting widespread species. Conversely, range filling of ectomycorrhizal plants was primarily associated with abiotic environments. Our results suggest that mycorrhizal symbioses play a critical role in mediating plant responses to anthropogenic pressures across broad geographic scales and highlight the need to integrate plant-mycorrhizal interactions to predict biodiversity shifts in a changing environment.

Climate change and intensified agricultural activities are altering hydrological regimes and nitrogen inputs in wetland ecosystems, yet the mechanisms by which dominant wetland plants coordinate their responses to water-nitrogen interactions across growth stages remain insufficiently understood. This study investigated the dominant species, Carex schmidtii, utilizing a controlled experiment with three water levels (-10 cm, 0 cm and 10 cm) and three nitrogen additions (0, 60 and 120 kg N hm^-2 a^-1). Results revealed that C. schmidtii displayed pronounced stage-dependent plasticity to water-nitrogen interactions. Water availability emerged as the key factor determining growth and resource allocation, whereas nitrogen effects were strongly modulated by water conditions. During the vegetative growth stage, water limitation suppressed plant growth regardless of nitrogen addition, with plant height (ZG) in the WLN0 group decreased by 22.16% reltive to the W0N0, and this growth inhibition persisted even under high nitrogen inputs, indicating that nitrogen could not compensate for water deficiency. At low water level, water use efficiency (WUE) and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) reached highest values and displayed positive correlation, indicating efficient resource utilization. During the reproductive growth stage, nitrogen played a stronger role in promoting structural developement and maintaining functional stability. Nitrogen additions alleviated NUE reduction under low water, whereas high water induced an escape response marked by reduced WUE (-29.10%) and elevated NUE (+119%). These findings highlight contrasting coordination strategies across growth stages and provide new insight into the adaptive mechanisms of dominant wetland plants under shifting hydrological and nutrient regimes.

The role of local plant microbiome in affecting invasive plant growth remains unclear. We examined how aboveground and belowground microbes from 25 phylogenetically distinct local plants affect the growth and endophytic community assembly of the invasive Ageratina adenophora. We found that both the plant phylogenetics and the microbial community composition of local plants shaped endophytic community assembly in A. adenophora seedlings. Phylogenetic and physicochemical factors of the local plants did not explain their effects on growth of A. adenophora. Instead, growth was affected by both the microbial sources associated with local plants and the endophytes selectively enriched by A. adenophora. Aboveground microbes promoted A. adenophora growth more strongly than belowground soil microbes. On average, A. adenophora seedlings inoculated with aboveground tissues harbored a greater relative abundance of beneficial microbes and a lower relative abundance of detrimental microbes compared to those receiving soil inoculation. This study highlighted that the invasive A. adenophora can selectively recruit microbial communities from local plant microbiomes to enhance its growth.

Tree planting has been widely implemented worldwide to restore forest area and ecosystem services. While China has become the world’s largest country in terms of planted tree area, it remains unclear whether these tree plantations approximate the close-to-nature 3D structures that are critical for supporting ecosystem services. Using Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) data, in combination with linear mixed model analysis, this study for the first time provides a national-scale assessment of the difference in 3D structure between natural forests and tree plantations in China. We found that natural forests outperform tree plantations in canopy height (ΔRH98 = 0.58 m), foliage height diversity (ΔFHD = 0.06), plant area index (ΔPAI = 0.22), and canopy cover (ΔCover = 0.04). These differences vary across vegetation regions, with the largest ΔRH98, ΔPAI and ΔCover in the Warm Temperate Deciduous Broadleaf Forest Region, whereas the largest ΔFHD was found in the Cold Temperate Coniferous Forest Region. Linear mixed modeling further revealed that ΔPAI and ΔCover decreased under more favorable hydrothermal conditions. Our study revealed structural differences between China’s natural forests and tree plantations, highlighting the importance of selecting suitable sites with favorable environmental conditions for tree plantations and promoting close-to-nature management practice to support their ecosystem services.