Elton's biotic resistance hypothesis, which posits that diverse communities should be more resistant to biological invasions, has received considerable experimental support. However, it remains unclear whether such a negative diversity–invasibility relationship would persist under anthropogenic environmental change. By using the common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) as a model invader, our 4‐year grassland experiment demonstrated consistently negative relationships between resident species diversity and community invasibility, irrespective of nitrogen addition, a result further supported by a meta‐analysis. Importantly, our experiment showed that plant diversity consistently resisted invasion simultaneously through increased resident biomass, increased trait dissimilarity among residents, and increased community‐weighted means of resource‐conservative traits that strongly resist invasion, pointing to the importance of both trait complementarity and sampling effects for invasion resistance even under resource enrichment. Our study provides unique evidence that considering species’ functional traits can help further our understanding of biotic resistance to biological invasions in a changing environment.

Since Darwin's time, degree of ecological similarity between exotic and native species has been assumed to affect the establishment success or failure of exotic species. However, a direct test of the effect of exotic–native similarity on establishment of exotics is scarce because of the difficulty in recognizing failures of species to establish in the field. Here, using a database on the establishment success and failure of exotic fish species introduced into 673 freshwater lakes, we evaluate the effect of similarity on the establishment of exotic fishes by combining phylogenetic and functional information. We illustrate that, relative to other biotic and abiotic factors, exotic–native phylogenetic and functional similarities were the most important correlates of exotic fish establishment. While phylogenetic similarity between exotic and resident fish species promoted successful establishment, functional similarity led to failure of exotics to become established. Those exotic species phylogenetically close to, but functionally distant from, native fishes were most likely to establish successfully. Our findings provide a perspective to reconcile Darwin's naturalization conundrum and suggest that, while phylogenetic relatedness allows exotic fish species to pre‐adapt better to novel environments, they need to possess distinct functional traits to reduce competition with resident native fish species.

Phytochemical investigation on the roots of Swietenia macrophylla yielded one new pharagmalin-type limonoid named 2-dehydroxyl-swietephragmin C (1) and one new xanthone, 1,5-dihydroxy-6-methoxy-6',6'-dimethyl-2H-pyrano[2',3':3,2]xanthone (2), in addition to three known compounds. The structures of the new compounds were unambiguously determined by comprehensive spectroscopic methods (NMR, UV, IR, MS), as well as by comparison with the reported data in the literature. Xanthones were reported from Swietenia genus for the first time.

A central aim of invasion biology has been to identify key functional differences between native and exotic species to determine which traits may be responsible for invasion success and impacts. There are two primary ways that differences may exist between native and exotic species—the traits of the local species pools may differ, or the way that the traits interact with their environment may differ. We explored leaf nutrient concentrations as functional traits that directly link to plant metabolic processes by sampling healthy, mature leaves from 119 native and exotic taxa across a wide range of successional statuses in New Jersey, USA. Leaf nutrient concentration data (carbon, calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) were paired with long‐term community dynamics from the Buell–Small Succession Study to evaluate abundance‐weighted trait values over succession for native and exotic species. After accounting for differences across growth forms, there were minimal differences in foliar nutrients based on plant origin, with only lower leaf carbon and higher leaf potassium in exotic species. However, these differences were not sufficient to generate overall differences between native and exotic species in a multivariate analysis. In contrast, the successional trajectories of the abundance‐weighted trait values for most leaf nutrients differed strongly between native and exotic plants. While this pattern may be partially attributable to variation in the species pool for carbon and potassium, successional processes generated differential sorting, suggesting underlying differences in how the same traits function in native and exotic assemblages. Synthesis. These results suggest that both variation in the species pool and variation in the successional selection of plant traits can generate functional differences between native and exotic plants. Assessments of trait differences between native and exotic species will require information on traits and plant performance to unambiguously link traits to function in dynamic plant communities.

Although phylogenetic distance between native and exotic species has a close link with their interactions, it is still unclear how environmental stresses and species interactions influence the relationship between phylogenetic distance and biological invasions. Here we assessed the effect of invader-native phylogenetic distance on the growth of the invader (Symphyotrichum subulatum) under three levels of drought (no, moderate, or intense drought). Under no drought, interspecific competition between close relatives was the dominant process and native communities more closely related to the invader showed higher resistance to invasion, supporting Darwin's naturalization hypothesis. In contrast, under intense drought, facilitation between close relatives by mutualism with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) became more important, and the invader became more successful in their more closely related native communities, supporting the preadaptation hypothesis. The colonization rate of AMF of the invader was higher in more closely related native communities regardless of the drought treatment, but it was only positively related to invader biomass under intense drought. Therefore, the shift of species interactions from competition to facilitation may be ascribed to the promotion of AMF to invasion occurring under intense drought, which leads to the effect of closely related natives on the invader shifting from negative to positive. Our results provide a new angle to resolve Darwin's naturalization conundrum from the change of species interactions along a stress gradient, and provide important clues for invasion management when species interactions change in response to global climatic change.