Functional traits Invasion ecology Phenotypic plasticity

Abstract Evolutionary community ecology is an emerging field of study that includes evolutionary principles such as individual trait variation and plasticity of traits to provide a more mechanistic insight as to how species diversity is maintained and community pro-cesses are shaped across time and space. In this review we explore phenotypic plasticity in functional traits and its consequences at the community level. We argue that resource requirement and resource uptake are plastic traits that can alter fundamental and realised niches of species in the community if environmental conditions change. We conceptually add to niche models by including phenotypic plasticity in traits involved in resource allocation under stress. Two qualitative predictions that we derive are: (1) plasticity in resource requirement induced by availability of resources enlarges the fundamental niche of species and causes a reduction of vacant niches for other species and (2) plasticity in the proportional resource uptake results in expansion of the realized niche, causing a reduction in the possibility for coexistence with other species. We illustrate these predictions with data on the competitive impact of invasive species. Furthermore, we review the quickly increasing number of empirical studies on evolutionary community ecology and demon