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Summary Fundamental ecological research is both intrinsically interesting and provides the basic knowledge required to answer applied questions of importance to the management of the natural world. The 100th anniversary of the British Ecological Society in 2013 is an opportune moment to reflect on the current status of ecology as a science and look forward to high‐light priorities for future work. To do this, we identified 100 important questions of fundamental importance in pure ecology. We elicited questions from ecologists working across a wide range of systems and disciplines. The 754 questions submitted (listed in the online appendix) from 388 participants were narrowed down to the final 100 through a process of discussion, rewording and repeated rounds of voting. This was done during a two‐day workshop and thereafter. The questions reflect many of the important current conceptual and technical pre‐occupations of ecology. For example, many questions concerned the dynamics of environmental change and complex ecosystem interactions, as well as the interaction between ecology and evolution. The questions reveal a dynamic science with novel subfields emerging. For example, a group of questions was dedicated to disease and micro‐organisms and another on human impacts and global change reflecting the emergence of new subdisciplines that would not have been foreseen a few decades ago. The list also contained a number of questions that have perplexed ecologists for decades and are still seen as crucial to answer, such as the link between population dynamics and life‐history evolution. Synthesis. These 100 questions identified reflect the state of ecology today. Using them as an agenda for further research would lead to a substantial enhancement in understanding of the discipline, with practical relevance for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem function.

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Several recent studies demonstrate that yield of individual plants, and their allocation of biomass between roots and shoots, can be profoundly affected by the pattern of supply of soil‐based resources. Patchy provision of soil‐based resources can affect the location of root biomass, as roots often proliferate in nutrient‐rich patches. Root system size is important in determining whether plants access nutrient‐rich patches, and the proportion of root systems located within such patches. This proportion will alter as growth proceeds. Species with small root systems have a limited ability to place roots in nutrient‐rich patches even when they are very close. Of four species with different root system sizes, the growth of the species with the smallest root system was significantly limited by being located in nutrient‐poor substrate even when nutrient‐rich substrate was only 3.5 cm away, whereas three species with larger root systems were not disadvantaged. Both in the laboratory and in the field, root density is higher in nutrient‐rich patches, and such patches can contain roots of many plants. Recent work showing that plants can respond to non‐self roots sharing the same nutrient supply suggests that competition will be more severe in nutritionally patchy substrates than in homogeneous environments with the same overall nutrient supply. Taken together, these facts lead to the prediction that inter‐ and intraspecific plant interactions will be influenced by patterns of nutrient supply. We present evidence supporting this prediction, and indicating that population and community structure are also affected by patterns of nutrient supply. Significant differences in population yield, plant size distribution, and mortality have been recorded between populations growing under patchy and uniform conditions. Plant communities grown from identical seed inocula, with the same overall nutrient supply, provided in different spatial and temporal patterns, differed by up to 44% in total biomass, up to 70% in root biomass, and differed in species composition. These significant effects of heterogeneous resource supply on plants merit further detailed study. We present a framework of predictions of the impacts of different types of spatial heterogeneity in nutrient supply on the performance of single plants, and on plant interactions, plant populations, and plant communities.

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