Functional Plant Ecology, Second Edition

Diversity of plant form and life history and their distribution onto different habitats suggest that plant functions should underlie this diversity, providing tools to successfully and differentially thrive in every habitat. The knowledge of these functions is then the key to understand community and ecosystem structure and functioning, something that attracted the interest and effort of many plant ecologists trying to establish patterns of adaptive specialization in plants.

This volume on Functional Plant Ecology is an updated version of a successful first edition in which we tried to put together chapters from all areas of plant ecology to provide readers the broadest view of functional approaches to plant ecology. Our aim was to gather original reviews with an attractive presentation, giving a comprehensive overview of the topic with a historical perspective when needed. The book is intended for a broad audience, from plant ecologists to students, with characteristics of both a textbook and an essay book. We were not interested in presentation of new experimental data, novel theoretical interpretations, or hypotheses, but rather asked the authors to provide easy-to-read, up-to-date, and suggestive introductions to each topic.