Community ecology is frequently invoked as complementary to and useful for guiding ecological restoration. While the conceptual literature is devoted to this unification, first‐hand accounts from practitioners and ecologists suggest that integration may be weak in practice. To date, there have been no analyses of how extensively community ecology theory appears in the empirical restoration literature. We address this knowledge gap with the first quantitative assessment of the extent to which community ecology concepts appear in empirical restoration literature by analysing the use of community ecology theories, concepts and conceptually derived tools in the design and interpretation of 1,000+ experimental ecological restoration studies over time (20 years) across all global regions. We also gauge general trends in author demographics, focal ecosystems and taxa targeted by these studies. We found that the incorporation of community ecology into restoration research has increased significantly in recent years. Community assembly and succession theories were the community ecology concepts integrated most often, while the functional traits framework and evolutionary theory have increased in usage recently. Synthesis and applications. Restoration endeavours are increasingly infused with elements of community ecology. Our results highlight the widespread application of deterministic models of community structure in restoration design and the rise of ecosystem service and function‐focused restoration. With this diagnostic summary of these applications, ecologists and restoration practitioners can move forward while directly exploring underdeveloped synergies between theory and practice.

The success of restoration projects is known to vary widely, with outcomes relating to numerous biotic and abiotic factors. Though many studies have examined the factors associated with long‐term restoration success, few have examined which factors impact the establishment of restoration plantings. In Australia's Wet Tropics, we used a large replicated restoration experiment to assess seedling survival for 24 native rainforest species commonly used in local restoration efforts. The experiment allowed for a rigorous assessment of the effects of species functional traits, planting conditions, and landscape‐ and local‐scale biotic and abiotic factors on seedling survival. This study reports on seedling survival between three different time periods of 0–4, 4–9 and 9–31 months post planting. The probability of seedling survival was influenced by multiple factors, varying in importance over time. Across the whole study period, seedlings with high wood density and which were planted closer to intact forest consistently displayed the highest probabilities of survival. Transient factors affecting seedling survival across the three time periods included plot aspect (0–4 months only), the identity of the planter and slope (4–9 and 9–31 months). Overall, species survival did not differ between the low (6 species) and high (24 species) diversity treatments, but was significantly lower in monocultures of Flindersia brayleyana by the end of the study. We demonstrate that early‐stage seedling survival depends on species wood density and planting location. Our results support the use of species with more conservative growth strategies when limited funds are available for follow‐up plantings. High wood density species had significantly higher survival than lower wood density, early successional species typically used in rainforest restoration plantings. Synthesis and applications. Our study highlights the importance of wood density and landscape structure to the initial survival of rainforest plantings. Factors influencing seedling survival shifted over time but, most importantly, our results highlight that, when planting into abandoned pastures, it may be preferable to select species with higher wood densities to maximize survival during the crucial early stages of establishment and growth.

Plant species can show considerable morphological and functional variation along environmental gradients. This intraspecific trait variation (ITV) can have important consequences for community assembly, biotic interactions, ecosystem functions and responses to global change. However, directly measuring ITV across many species and wide geographic areas is often infeasible. Thus, a method to predict spatial variation in a species’ functional traits could be valuable. We measured specific leaf area (SLA), height and leaf area (LA) of grasses across California, covering 59 species at 230 sampling locations. We asked how these traits change along climate gradients within each species and used machine learning to predict local trait values for any species at any location based on phylogenetic position, local climate and that species’ mean traits. We then examined how much these local predictions alter patterns of assemblage‐level trait variation across the state. Most species exhibited higher SLA and grew taller at higher temperatures and produced larger leaves in drier conditions. The random forests predicted spatial variation in functional traits very accurately, with correlations up to 0.97. Because trait records were spatially biased towards warmer areas, and these areas tend to have higher SLA individuals within each species, species means of SLA were upwardly biased. As a result, using species means over‐estimates SLA in the cooler regions of the state. Our results also suggest that height may be substantially under‐predicted in the warmest areas. Synthesis. Using only species mean traits to characterize the functional composition of communities risks introducing substantial error into trait‐based estimates of ecosystem properties including decomposition rates or NPP. The high performance of random forests in predicting local trait values provides a way forward for estimating high‐resolution patterns of ITV without a massive data collection effort.

Restoration practitioners are faced with many decisions when restoring tropical forests in abandoned pastures. One of the most important decisions is selecting combinations of species to plant that can mitigate the many barriers seedlings face to maximize seedling establishment and growth. To aid in species selection, there is an increasing shift in using plant functional traits, yet there is still progress to be made in understanding how traits respond to barriers present during the early stages of seedling establishment. Here, I present an example of a trait-barrier relationship from our recent publication in the Journal of Applied Ecology and discuss how using functional traits can help develop tailored combinations of species for specific site conditions.

Fertilization is an effective management strategy to promote community biomass but can simultaneously reduce species diversity in many grassland systems. Shifts in competition for resources have been proposed to explain the decline in plant species diversity due to fertilization, yet the underlying mechanism driving species loss remains controversial. This uncertainty may be driven by variation in aboveground and belowground resource availability. However, experiments simultaneously manipulating both light availability and soil nutrients are rare. Using a 6-year field experiment to manipulate light availability (via shade cloth) and soil nutrients (via fertilizer addition), we tested this resource competition hypothesis in a species-rich alpine meadow by examining the variation of species traits associated with the capacity of light acquisition within these treatments. Our results showed that artificial shade decreased community biomass accumulation whereas fertilization increased it. In contrast, both shade and fertilization reduced species diversity. Extinction of non-Gramineae species (e.g., Fabaceae and Cyperaceae) was the main reason for species diversity decline. Species loss can be explained by the limitation of light availability and predicted by species traits associated with light acquisition capability under fertilization and low light tolerance under artificial shade. Specifically, fertilization eliminated species with lower stature and artificial shade exterminated species with the higher light compensation point (LCP). The findings suggest that light availability is consistently important for plant growth and that low competitiveness for light under fertilization and intolerance of low light conditions under artificial shade trigger species loss process in the alpine meadow. Our experiment helps clarify the mechanisms of how artificial shade and fertilization decreased species diversity and highlight that LCP, which tends to be neglected by most of the studies, is one of the vital drivers in determining species coexistence.