Non‐structural carbohydrates (NSCs, including soluble sugars and starch) are essential to support the growth and survival of terrestrial plants. Starch and sugars play different roles in multiple plant ecological functions such as drought tolerance, growth and plant defence, and several other processes which are being rapidly shaped by global environmental change. However, it is uncertain whether soluble sugars and starch show different responses across plant functional types, tissue types and treatment conditions (i.e. the intensity and duration of environmental variability) to global‐change drivers. Here based on a database of 275 plants (including 17 plant functional types), we conducted a meta‐analysis to examine the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration (eCO2), nitrogen (N) addition, drought and warming on NSCs and its components. We found NSCs responses to global environmental change were mainly driven by (a) soluble sugar changes in response to N addition and drought, as well as (b) starch changes in response to eCO2 and warming. The different responses between soluble sugars and starch were more evident under eCO2 and drought, especially in herbs or leaves. Interactive effects of multiple environmental change drivers on soluble sugars and starch were mainly additive. The divergent main and interactive effects on soluble sugars and starch depend on experimental conditions. For example, the starch responses to eCO2 and its interaction with N addition were the strongest in short‐term experiments. Overall, our study shows the divergent responses of soluble sugars and starch in terrestrial plants to different global environmental change drivers, suggesting a changed carbon sink–source balance in plants under future global changes. The findings also highlight that predicting plant functional changes into the future requires a mechanistic understanding of how NSCs and its components are linked to specific environmental change drivers. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

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Summary Plant plastic responses are critical to the adaptation and survival of species under climate change, but whether they are constrained by evolutionary history (phylogeny) is largely unclear. Plant leaf traits are key in determining plants’ performance in different environments, and if these traits and their variation are phylogenetically dependent, predictions could be made to identify species vulnerable to climate change. We compiled data on three leaf traits (photosynthetic rate, specific leaf area, and leaf nitrogen content) and their variation under four environmental change scenarios (warming, drought, elevated CO2, or nitrogen addition) for 434 species, from 210 manipulation experiments. We found phylogenetic signal in the three traits but not in their variation under the four scenarios. This indicates that closely related species show similar traits but that their plastic responses could not be predicted from species relatedness under environmental change. Meanwhile, phylogeny weakened the slopes but did not change the directions of conventional pairwise trait relationships, suggesting that co‐evolved leaf trait pairs have consistent responses under contrasting environmental conditions. Phylogeny can identify lineages rich in species showing similar traits and predict their relationships under climate change, but the degree of plant phenotypic variation does not vary consistently across evolutionary clades.

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an increasingly common and globally emergent immune-mediated disorder. The etiology of IBD is complex, involving multiple factors such as immune dysregulation, environmental factors, genetic mutations, and microbiota dysbiosis, exacerbated by a lack of effective clinical therapies. Recently, studies hypothesized that dysbiosis of intestinal flora might participate in the onset of IBD. Metformin is widely used to treat type 2 diabetes and has shown beneficial effects in mouse models of IBD, although its underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Accumulating studies found that metformin shows beneficial effects for diabetes by affecting microbiota composition. This study explores possible regulatory effects of metformin on intestinal microecology during treatment for IBD.Methods: Inflammation was induced using 3% Dextran Sulfate Sodium (DSS) solution to generate mice models of IBD. Metformin treatments were assayed by measuring body weights and colon lengths of mice and H&E staining to observe histological effects on colon tissue structures. Changes in bacterial community composition and diversity-related to IBD and metformin treatment were assessed by high-throughput metagenomic sequencing analysis.Results: Metformin administration significantly ameliorated body weight loss, inhibited colon shrinking, and contributed to preserving the integrity of colon histological structures. The gut microbiota profiles revealed that the biodiversity of intestinal flora lost during inflammation was restored under metformin treatment. Metformin administration was also associated with decreased pathogenic Escherichia shigella and increased abundance of Lactobacillus and Akkermansia.Conclusion: Metformin appears to induce anti-inflammatory effects, thus ameliorating colitis symptoms, concurrent with enrichment for beneficial taxa and restored microbial diversity, suggesting a viable strategy against IBD.

Plant functional traits are crucial features that modulate plant performance via influencing growth, survivorship, and reproduction (Díaz et al., 2016;Wright et al., 2004). Plant traits largely determine community assembly and the multiple functioning of ecosystems, such as biomass production and carbon storage (Migliavacca et al., 2021; van der Plas et al., 2020). Thus, our ability to understand and predict ecosystem function largely depends on quantifying plant trait distributions and their responses to environmental drivers (Kovenock & Swann, 2018). Climatic drivers shape and shift functional traits and ecological strategies across broad biogeographical gradients (Wieczynsk et al., 2019). However, plant functional traits at fine-grained communities are usually predominantly driven by local soil nutrient levels rather than large-scale climate variables (Bruelheide et al., 2018;Simpson et al., 2016). In addition, there is growing recognition that nutrient addition has become one of the