Natural Communities Research Articles

The proportion of low abundance species is a key predictor of plant β‐diversity across the latitudinal gradient

Abstract The diversity of life displays very strong patterns of disparity across the Earth. Beta (β)‐diversity (species compositional differences among sites) of woody plants, for instance, has usually been documented to decline with increasing latitude. Understanding these patterns, however, remains a grand challenge in ecology and evolution. We develop a mathematical model to explain patterns of β‐diversity across multiple landscapes. The model effectively predicts β‐diversity in simulated and natural communities, regardless of the types of species abundance distributions. Our model provides the novel insight that the proportion of species in the lowest abundance category (PL), which represents the share of relatively rare species in the regional species pool, is the key predictor of plant β‐diversity. By applying the model to global forest inventories sampled from 40.7° S to 60.7° N, we find that PL explains nearly 85% of the variation in plant β‐diversity along the global latitudinal gradient. Through a series of numerical simulations, we further show that the predictive power of PL on plant β‐diversity on a global scale is largely determined by the variation of intraspecific aggregation among different communities. Synthesis: We develop a new sampling model to predict patterns of β‐diversity and find that the PL explains the majority of the variation in plant β‐diversity along the latitudinal gradient. Our work provides a new tool in analysing β‐diversity and advances the theoretical understanding of large‐scale β‐diversity patterns across environmental gradients.

Global microbial community biodiversity increases with antimicrobial toxin abundance of rare taxa.

One of the central questions in microbial ecology is how to explain the high biodiversity of communities. A large number of rare taxa in the community have not been excluded by abundant taxa with competitive advantages, a contradiction known as the biodiversity paradox. Recently, increasing evidence has revealed the central importance of antimicrobial toxins as crucial weapons of antagonism in microbial survival. The powerful effects of antimicrobial toxins result in simple combinations of microorganisms failing to coexist under laboratory conditions, but it is unclear whether they also have a negative impact on the biodiversity of natural communities. Here, we revealed that microbial communities worldwide universally possess functional potential for antimicrobial toxin production. Counterintuitively, the biodiversity of global microbial communities increases, rather than decreases, as the abundance of antimicrobial toxins in rare taxa rises. Rare taxa may encode more antimicrobial toxins than abundant taxa, which is associated with the maintenance of the high biodiversity of microbial communities amid complex interactions. Our findings suggest that the antagonistic interaction caused by antimicrobial toxins may play a positive role in microbial community biodiversity at the global scale.

A Decade of Protecting Insect Biodiversity: The Impact of Multifunctional Margins in an Intensive Vegetable System

The intensification of agriculture over the past 80 years has led to significant changes in farm management, resulting in the creation of large-scale fields and the elimination of ecological structural elements. The loss of these areas has dramatically affected natural communities. This study aimed to test whether the implementation of floral margins generates significant differences in insect abundance over time. The study was carried out on an intensive vegetable farm in Spain over a ten-year period (2013–2022) where a floral margin was sown and maintained over the years. The results showed a clear linear increase in insect individuals, with a total increase of 403.33% from 2013 to 2022. The number of species increased by 138.80% overall, with most growth occurring in the first three years before stabilising (0.63% increase from 2016 to 2022). The analysis of community structure demonstrates a gradual evolution in the insect population dynamics aligned significantly with both log-series and log-normal distributions (p-value > 0.05). This long-term study demonstrates that floral margins are an essential tool for fostering insect biodiversity in intensive agricultural areas. The steady, rather than abrupt, shift in the ecosystem suggests that sustained implementation of floral margins can effectively prevent or reverse insect decline over time.

Co-inoculation with Bacillus thuringiensis RZ2MS9 and rhizobia improves the soybean development and modulates soil functional diversity.

Despite the beneficial effects of Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) on agriculture, understanding the consequences of introducing foreign microbes into soil taxonomic and functional diversity is necessary. This study evaluated the effects co-inoculation of soybean with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) RZ2MS9 and commercial rhizobia on the natural microbial community structure and functional potential. Our results indicated that soybean development was positively influenced by co-inoculation, plants exhibited greater height and a higher number of pods, and no reductions in productivity estimates. Soil prokaryotic diversity and community structure remained unchanged by Bt RZMS9 inoculation or co-inoculation with rhizobia 147 Days After Sowing (DAS). However, functional diversity was influenced by sole Bt inoculation, potentially due to community quorum sensing disruption by N-acyl homoserine lactone hydrolases. The genes enriched by co-inoculation were mostly related to soil phosphorus cycling, with gcd showing the most pronounced increase. The nifA genes increased when rhizobia alone were inoculated, suggesting that this pathway could be affected by Bt RZ2MS9 inoculation. This study demonstrates the synergistic activity of rhizobia and Bt RZ2MS9 on soybean development, without significantly interfering with natural microbial community, presenting a promising approach for sustainable crop management.

Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration and Community Development: An analysis of Impact in Selected Countries

Purpose: This paper explores the relationship between community development and Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) as a strategy for resource conservation and community empowerment. It highlights how FMNR contributes to ecological sustainability and rural household livelihoods in selected countries in West and East Africa, including Niger, Ghana, Mali, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. Methodology: A content review of FMNR practices was conducted, focusing on their adoption, spread, and impact on community development. The analysis emphasized economic empowerment, ecological sustainability, best practices, challenges, and mitigation strategies. Findings: The study found that FMNR enhances community livelihoods by promoting sustainable natural resource use and reducing environmental degradation. It strengthens community capacity for resource management and supports rural economic development. However, challenges such as land fragmentation, technological gaps, and limited adoption were noted. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: To scale up FMNR, stakeholders should prioritize community training, strengthen institutional frameworks, and provide policy support for sustainable resource management. Addressing technological and socio-economic barriers is essential to maximize FMNR's potential in improving livelihoods and achieving ecological sustainability.

Multiplicity of type 6 secretion system toxins limits the evolution of resistance

The bacterial type 6 secretion system (T6SS) is a toxin-injecting nanoweapon that mediates competition in plant- and animal-associated microbial communities. Bacteria can evolve de novo resistance against T6SS attacks, but resistance is far from universal in natural communities, suggesting key features of T6SS weaponry may act to limit its evolution. Here, we combine ecoevolutionary modeling and experimental evolution to examine how toxin type and multiplicity in Acinetobacter baylyi attackers shape resistance evolution in susceptible Escherichia coli competitors. In both our models and experiments, we find that combinations of multiple distinct toxins limit resistance evolution by creating genetic bottlenecks, driving resistant lineages extinct before they can reach high frequency. We also show that, paradoxically, single-toxin attackers can drive the evolution of cross-resistance, protecting bacteria against unfamiliar toxin combinations, even though such evolutionary pathways were inaccessible against multitoxin attackers. Our findings indicate that, comparable to antimicrobial and anticancer combination therapies, multitoxin T6SS arsenals function to limit resistance evolution in competing microbes. This helps us to understand why T6SSs remain widespread and effective weapons in microbial communities, and why many T6SS-armed bacteria encode functionally diverse anticompetitor toxins.

Harnessing gut microbial communities to unravel microbiome functions.

The gut microbiome impacts human health in direct and indirect ways. While many associations have been discovered between specific microbiome compositions and diseases, establishing causality, understanding the underlying mechanisms, and developing successful microbiome-based therapies require novel experimental approaches. In this opinion, we discuss how in vitro cultivation of diverse communities enables systematic investigation of the individual and collective functions of gut microbes. Up to now, the field has relied mostly on simple, bottom-up assembled synthetic communities or more complex, undefined stool-derived communities. Although powerful for dissecting interactions and mapping causal effects, these communities suffer either from ignoring the complexity, diversity, coevolution, and dynamics of natural communities or from lack of control of community composition. These limitations can be overcome in the future by establishing personalized culture collections from stool samples of different donors and assembling personalized communities to investigate native interactions and ecological relationships in a controlled manner.

An experimental test of eco-evolutionary dynamics on rocky shores.

A growing body of theoretical studies and laboratory experiments has focused attention on reciprocal feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes. However, uncertainty remains about whether such eco-evolutionary feedbacks have an important or negligible influence on natural communities. Thus, recent discussions call for field experiments that explore whether selection on phenotypic variation within populations leads to contemporaneous effects on community dynamics. To help fill this gap, in this study, we test the hypothesis that selection on consumer traits in a population of predatory drilling snails can drive eco-evolutionary dynamics in a rocky intertidal community in California, USA. We first conducted a laboratory selection experiment to raise newly hatched dogwhelks (Nucella canaliculata) on four diet treatments encompassing a range of prey species and shell thicknesses. Snails that survived to adulthood under these diet treatments differed in their capacity to drill thick-shelled mussels. Dogwhelks from these treatment groups were then outplanted to intertidal field cages for 1 year to test whether groups experiencing selection differed in their effects on mussel bed succession. As expected, succession proceeded most rapidly in the reference treatment with dogwhelks excluded. However, successional patterns differed minimally among dogwhelks raised under the different diet treatments. Thus, although our laboratory results suggest that prey can impose selection that leads to rapid adaptation and divergent consumer traits, these feedbacks were not strong enough to result in clear community effects in the field. We propose that a limited range of variation in functional traits within populations, moderate strengths of selection, and a background of substantial abiotic and biotic variation may all act to dampen the potential for strong eco-evolutionary dynamics in this and many other natural communities.

Similar Conditions With Opposite Effects: Predation-Risk Effects on Prey Abundance Are Highly Contingent.

Experiments have shown that predation-risk effects on prey fitness can be highly contingent on environmental conditions, suggesting a potential difficulty in generalizing risk effects on prey abundance in natural settings. Rather than study the influence of a particular controlled factor, we examine the problem with a novel approach. We examined the influence of risk effects in multiple experiments performed under similar study conditions. Any differences in the experiments would typically be deemed incidental, that is, they would not be given attention in methodology, nor be presented as factors affecting results or inferences. Therefore, any differences in the magnitude and direction of risk effects among experiments would indicate that risk effects on prey population abundance are strongly influenced by context in natural communities. The multiple experiments were conducted under similar conditions, objectives, measurables and implementation, and captured much of the complexity of natural systems (e.g., they were performed with diverse prey assemblages (≥ 11 taxa) over multiple prey generations). Our results highlight the potentially profound context dependence of risk effects: risk effects on the density of some zooplankton species varied between a significant negative effect in one experiment to a significant positive effect in another, whereas other species showed significant negative or positive effects in one experiment and no effect in another. We review mechanisms that could underlie risk effects having opposite effects on the same prey. Our findings illustrate that risk effects observed in one study may not hold, even for the same species in the same system.

A Continuum From Positive to Negative Interactions Drives Plant Species' Performance in a Diverse Community.

With many species interacting in nature, determining which interactions describe community dynamics is nontrivial. By applying a computational modeling approach to an extensive field survey, we assessed the importance of interactions from plants (both inter- and intra-specific), pollinators and insect herbivores on plant performance (i.e., viable seed production). We compared the inclusion of interaction effects as aggregate guild-level terms versus terms specific to taxonomic groups. We found that a continuum from positive to negative interactions, containing mostly guild-level effects and a few strong taxonomic-specific effects, was sufficient to describe plant performance. While interactions with herbivores and intraspecific plants varied from weakly negative to weakly positive, heterospecific plants mainly promoted competition and pollinators facilitated plants. The consistency of these empirical findings over 3 years suggests that including the guild-level effects and a few taxonomic-specific groups rather than all pairwise and high-order interactions, can be sufficient for accurately describing species variation in plant performance across natural communities.

Environmental influences on chorusing patterns in an Australian tropical savanna frog community

AbstractEcoacoustic methods provide opportunities for ecological studies of vocalizing species within the context of the natural habitats and communities in which they occur. Continuous acoustic monitoring of species assemblages can reveal patterns in breeding phenology, behavior, and interactions. We used long‐duration false‐color spectrograms derived from acoustic indices to detect the nightly chorusing of a community of anurans in a tropical savanna in north Queensland. We described the chorusing patterns of each species over two wet seasons at three breeding sites, and used conditional random forest analysis to investigate the influence of various environmental factors. Frogs in these habitats form multispecies aggregations at water bodies during breeding periods when males form large choruses to attract females. The chorusing patterns revealed the species have different breeding periods, which could be broadly categorized as explosive or prolonged. While rain events were often a trigger for the commencement of the breeding period, species responded differently to environmental conditions. Choruses of explosive breeding species occurred only on the night of, or night after, the first high rainfall event of the wet season. The prolonged breeding species showed idiosyncratic patterns of chorusing, which were generally consistent across sites. Fine‐grained nightly data on patterns of chorusing and the relationship with environmental conditions allow us to understand the detectability of the presence, or absence, of the frog species in these habitats, and provide baseline data for monitoring and management programs.

How to develop nature-based solutions for revegetation on abandoned farmland in the Loess Plateau of China?

Adequate revegetation of abandoned farmland acts as a defence against desertification and soil loss, and can help remove carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thereby playing an important role in regulating regional climate change. Legume, a nitrogen-fixation species, which could effectively improve vegetation coverage to control soil erosion, was widely used for revegetation. However, the dynamics of soil and plant development after legume introduction on abandoned farmland remain unclear. A 16-year in situ experiment including three treatments, natural abandonment (fallow), planting of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), and sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis L.) was conducted on bare farmland of the Loess Plateau in 2003-2018. The results showed that initially introduced species significantly affected the potential succession patterns in the community. Alfalfa introduction decreased plant community stability (CS) and hindered plant species establishment in early successional stages due to inter/intraspecific competition caused by high aboveground biomass (AB). Plant CS was affected by species evenness, AB, revegetation time and revegetation methods. Sweet clover facilitated succession process by rapidly improving soil conditions (organic carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) and quickly exiting from the community after its life span to avoid further competitive effects. During 2003-2018, the soil (water storage, organic carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus), plant (AB, CS), and ecological related variables (plant diversity and soil carbon sequestration) contributed 60.1%, 15.7% and 20.2%, respectively, to the ecosystem health. Alfalfa planting increased ecosystem health index (EHI) in the long-term while sweet clover favours plant diversity, providing less overall EHI but recover faster than natural abandonment community. We concluded that alfalfa introduction, which provides the greatest AB, is a good option for comprehensively improving ecosystems (e.g., soil nutrient sequestration and control soil erosion) if the site in question suffers from few disturbances. Sweet clover introduction, however, is recommendable for restoring native biodiversity effectively if disturbances are frequent.

Antimicrobial resistance on Ships: A Narrative review.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a global health challenge, particularly in maritime environments where unique conditions foster its emergence and spread. Characterized by confined spaces, high population density, and extensive global mobility, ships create a setting ripe for the development and dissemination of resistant pathogens. This review aims to analyse the contributing factors, epidemiological challenges, mitigation strategies specific to AMR on ships and to propose future research directions, bridging a significant gap in the literature. Maritime environments facilitate the propagation of AMR through interconnected factors. The confined and communal nature of ships allows resistant pathogens to spread rapidly among diverse populations. The inappropriate and often empirical use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, compounded by limited access to diagnostic tools, accelerates the selection of resistant strains. Poor infection control practices, including inadequate sanitation and ineffective isolation measures, exacerbate the risks. Environmental contamination through untreated wastewater and ballast water discharge introduces resistant bacteria and genes into marine ecosystems, posing additional public health and ecological threats. Surveillance of AMR on ships is hampered by logistical barriers, including the lack of standardized protocols and reporting systems. Documented outbreaks of resistant pathogens, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, underline the public health risks associated with AMR in maritime settings, alongside significant operational disruptions and environmental impacts. Despite advancements in portable diagnostic technologies, their adoption on ships remains minimal, leaving critical gaps in detection and management. Effective management of AMR in maritime settings necessitates the integration of stewardship programs tailored to shipboard environments, reinforced infection control measures, and advanced wastewater treatment.

Sustainable practices in low carbon tourism: A case study of Thailand

Environmental challenges emanating from the impacts of climate change in Thailand's tourism sector remain serious for one of the important pillars. These underpin the need for low-carbon tourism that is based on sustainable practices to guarantee the long-term well-being of the country's natural resources and communities. This case study investigates the low-carbon initiatives current situation in the Khaosok Tourism Cluster, with a focus on community-based tourism, government policies, and private sector participatory approaches to sustainable development. It enumerates the main benefits derived from embracing low-carbon practices through a qualitative multi-method approach: environmental protection, economic growth, and the social development of the local community. The study also highlights various significant challenges that the Khaosok Tourism Cluster face, including financial constraints, general lack of awareness about low carbon tourism among its stakeholders, and a regulatory shortfall that works to inhibit the adoption of sustainable measures. The addressing of such challenges is crucial to the successful integration of low carbon practices in the tourism industry. Outcomes of this research also point to the importance of multi-agency coordination and collaboration across government agencies, private operators, and the communities. These players should be working hand in hand in the development of mechanisms that give way to a low-carbon tourism community. This study proposes some recommendations; the first of these relates to improving incentive policy mechanisms that encourage and ensure compliance with low-carbon practices. Involvement of comprehensive policies and guidelines which will inspire integration of sustainable measures in the tourism sectors. Second, educational programs should be established to boost the understanding and awareness of low carbon tourism among all stakeholders, including tourists themselves, local communities, and tourism operators. A well-informed community stands a better chance of actively participating and supporting such sustainable initiatives. It is also important in the final analysis to institute effective monitoring systems that will help in successful implementation of low carbon practices. This will help in regular monitoring and evaluation to know what needs adjusting in pursuit of sustainability in practice, measure performance, as well as track progress through set targets. It will also provide valuable data for future research and policy development in sustainable tourism. By applying these recommendations, Thailand will set the standard toward low-carbon sustainable tourism to meet global climate goals. The holistic approach will preserve the beauty and resources of the country, while communities of the country will experience economic growth and social well-being.

Komunitas Virtual dan Riil: Relasi Gereja dan Media Sosial di Era Digital

The church stands by the conditions of natural communities. Nevertheless, the church in history must accept that technology is also present. In this case, the church must make technology a companion, not an opposition. The church works with technology, one of which produces communities on social media. This research used the theory of Tim Hutchings and Irwyn L. Ince Jr. on ecclesiology. This research aimed to analyze virtual communities in the online world and natural communities in the offline world as different needs by revealing the closeness of the church and social media in the digital era. The method was qualitative research with a literature review and observation. The researchers found that the relationship between the church and social media in the digital era is not a big problem as long as people understand their priorities and conditions, namely setting themselves into virtual communities as secondary needs and natural communities as primary needs.

Community size and disturbance history jointly explain the interplay between stochastic and deterministic community variation in benthic invertebrates

Community ecology has so far struggled to integrate both deterministic and stochastic processes into a global model of community variation. To address this issue, we aimed to characterise the ecological conditions that determine the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic community variation in benthic macroinvertebrates. We sampled macroinvertebrate and algal periphyton communities, and microhabitat conditions at monthly intervals over a five year period in two sampling sites in the regulated Durance River and one site in the Asse River (a natural tributary of the Durance). The relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes was estimated over time as functional and taxonomic spatial β‐deviation (i.e. β‐diversityobs − mean β‐diversitynull/SD β‐diversitynull) for each sampling date and site. We additionally quantified deterministic variation as the trait–environment relationship and predicted a positive correlation with β‐deviation metrics. We found evidence of overdispersal in both functional and taxonomic β‐diversities compared to null expectations. Spatial β‐deviation was highly variable over temporal scales and was jointly explained by invertebrate community size, disturbance (i.e. flooding), periphyton diversity and to a lesser extent, microhabitat diversity. The key factor that explained β‐deviation was recent river discharge (< 90 days), which had a strong negative effect on community size but was also directly associated with higher β‐deviation, likely related to recolonization processes post‐flood. Lastly, we found that when β‐deviation was high, the hydraulic trait–environment relationship was stronger. This indicates that spatial heterogeneity in hydraulic conditions was the main driver of deterministic variation in invertebrate community structure. This study demonstrates that the importance of stochastic processes can vary greatly over short (~ months) and long (~ years) temporal windows with significant consequences for trait–environment relationships. Our study provides an example of how stochastic community variation can be modelled to better interpret deterministic patterns of community structure in natural communities.

Impact of micro-habitat fragmentation on microbial population growth dynamics.

Microbial communities thrive in virtually every habitat on Earth and are essential to the function of diverse ecosystems. Most microbial habitats are not spatially continuous and well-mixed, but rather composed, at the microscale, of many isolated or semi-isolated local patches of different sizes, resulting in partitioning of microbial populations into discrete local populations. The impact of this spatial fragmentation on population dynamics is not well-understood. Here, we study how such variably sized micro-habitat patches affect the growth dynamics of clonal microbial populations and how dynamics in individual patches dictate those of the metapopulation. To investigate this, we developed the μ-SPLASH, an ecology-on-a-chip platform, enabling the culture of microbes in microscopic landscapes comprised of thousands of microdroplets, with a wide range of sizes. Using the μ-SPLASH, we cultured the model bacteria E. coli and based on time-lapse microscopy, analyzed the population dynamics within thousands of individual droplets. Our results reveal that growth curves substantially vary with droplet size. Although growth rates generally increase with drop size, reproductive success and the time to approach carrying capacity, display non-monotonic patterns. Combining μ-SPLASH experiments with computational modeling, we show that these patterns result from both stochastic and deterministic processes, and demonstrate the roles of initial population density, patchiness, and patch size distribution in dictating the local and metapopulation dynamics. This study reveals basic principles that elucidate the effects of habitat fragmentation and population partitioning on microbial population dynamics. These insights deepen our understanding of natural microbial communities and have significant implications for microbiome engineering.

Community, Family and Animal Conservation Sustainability in the Perspective of Normative Law and Maqasid Sharia

Animal conservation aims to preserve and breed animals to achieve the benefits of a sustainable natural ecosystemincluding community and family. One of the efforts made by the government to provide information and knowledge to the public in an attempt to minimize wildlife hunting is through the legal protection of animals, as stated in Law Number 5 of 1990 concerning the Conservation of Biological Resources and Their Ecosystems, and Government Regulation Number 13 of 1994 concerning the Hunting of Game Animals. The research method used is juridical-normative with a legislative and socio-legal approach. Then, it is linked to the policy of animal conservation, which is examined from the Maqasid Shariah perspective. The research results provided recommendations to the government in creating legislation or decision policies oriented to animals that are not yet rare. These recommendations include educating the public about rare and non-rare animal species, setting educational targets, supporting conservation efforts, and establishing animal breeding programs. Furthermore, from the perspective of Maqasid Sharia, the conservation of these animals falls under the category of daruriyah, which means that the preservation and protection of wildlife are essential for the sustainability and keeping of the Hifz al-Mal element (natural ecosystem wealth).

Shifts and rebound in microbial community function following repeated introduction of a novel species

Natural microbial communities continually encounter novel species that may successfully establish or simply be transient, yet both outcomes can alter the resident community composition and function. Preserving natural microbial communities and innovating synthetic ones requires insight on the immediate and long‐term impact of species introductions on both composition and function. For instance, it remains unclear whether there are gradual and long‐term impacts from repeated introductions where the introduced species fails to establish – so‐called failed invaders. To investigate the persistent impacts by failed invaders, we present an experimental test of community stability over multiple generations against repeated novel species introduction. We propagated a natural microbial community from a traditional fermented milk beverage for approximately 100 generations, with or without, repeated introduction of Escherichia coli at each transfer. Community function was determined by metabolic profiling, and we observed alterations therein immediately after E. coli introduction, followed by recovery, or rebound once ceased. In contrast to this proxy of community function, changes in the bacterial community composition were never detected. Our results evidence that community composition and function do not necessarily respond in parallel to an introduced species, potentially due to genotypic changes below species level detection or metabolic plasticity. Our work shows an ability for functional recovery in microbial communities and contributes insight on long‐term community stability to sustained disturbances.

Parental environment nitrogen and phosphorus availability affects offspring traits of eight annual plant species

The rates in which nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are entering natural plant communities have reached unprecedented levels, resulting in increasingly imbalanced N:P ratios potentially aggravating both plant invasions and plant extinctions. Plants may cope with changing environments via phenotypic plasticity, which may occur within one generation or between generations (transgenerational plasticity, TGP). Here, we investigated TGP in plant traits in response to variation in N and P availabilities, in eight annual plant species comprising endangered, nonendangered and invasive species. We hypothesized that adaptive effects would be evident when parental and offspring environments match. We also expected endangered species to exhibit the lowest, and invasive species the highest, adaptive TGP‐potential. A parental generation was raised under N‐limitation, balanced nutrient supply and P‐limitation, from which an offspring generation was grown under either the same or another option of these nutrient conditions. Across all species, offspring plants of N‐stressed parents showed thin roots, i.e. low average root diameter, which is advantageous under N‐limitation when repeatedly exposed to N‐limitation, and offspring of P‐stressed parents showed highest levels of phosphomonoesterase activity (PME activity), associated with P‐uptake, when repeatedly grown under P‐limitation. Contrary to our expectation, endangered species with P‐stressed parents performed better than nonendangered or invasive species especially when grown under P‐limitation in the offspring generation, probably due to a higher PME activity and longer and thicker roots. Our results demonstrate that the parental nutrient environment can have profound effects on offspring fitness and trait expressions, especially when parental and offspring environments match. There, TGP in response to parental nutrient limitation pre‐adapts the offspring generation, resulting in individuals exhibiting traits associated with higher nutrient uptake under nutrient deficient conditions. Overall, our findings indicate that TGP may play a significant role in the realised niches of plant species in general, and specifically in endangered species.