Anthropogenic heathlands are semi-cultural ecosystems with a unique cultural and biodiversity value, considered worthy of preservation across most of the world. Their rate of loss, however, is alarming. Currently, we know little about the heathlands’ actual span of instability and their association with abiotic and anthropogenic factors, including how much additional intervention they need to persist. Consequently, we are missing out on vital knowledge for conservation, management, and the historical persistence of heathlands. This paper develops a method to assess the ecological resilience of Atlantic inland heaths in the absence of human management. We use 12 existing cases of heathland succession to establish a four-step resilience grade for each site, which we regress onto a series of explaining factors and use in predicting postglacial heath resilience across Atlantic Northern Europe. We find that temperature, humidity, elevation and sandiness have a positive correlation with high heathland resilience. Our predictive mapping shows an uneven distribution of ecological heath resilience across Atlantic Northern Europe within an area of 1000x1200 km of 5x5 km resolution. Compared with archaeological and palaeoecological evidence, prehistoric heathland distributions far exceed areas that afford high heath resilience, suggesting that heath distribution and persistence depends on both abiotic and anthropogenic factors. Policy implications: The predictive map can be used as an initial screening tool for managers working towards heath preservation and restoration to predict resilience, prioritize conservation, and to plan management practices across Atlantic Northern Europe. The developed model and predictive map provide an important initial screening tool to assess heathland resilience for ecologists and will help managers to prioritize conservation efforts of heathland ecosystems. The results are equally relevant for scholars who are interested in humans’ role in increasing and decreasing ecosystem resilience. Moreover, we speculate that our predictive method can be applied in other regions across the world by adding regionally-specific variables.

1. Understanding how functional traits, which are key for plant functioning, relate to demographic parameters of populations is central to tackle pending issues in plant ecology such as the forecast of the fate of populations and communities in a changing world, the quantification of community assembly processes or the improvement of species distribution models. We addressed this question in the case of species from a Mediterranean rangeland of southern France. 2. Changes in species abundance in response to management intensification (fertilization and increased grazing pressure) were followed over a 28-year period. Probabilities of presence, and elasticities of the changes in the probability of space occupancy to colonization and survival, which are analogues of demographic parameters, were calculated for 53 species from the time series of abundance data using a space occupancy model. Nine quantitative traits pertaining to resource use, plant morphology, regeneration and phenology were measured on these species and related to demographic parameters. 3. The long-term dynamics of species in response to management intensification was associated with major changes in functional traits and strategies. Changes in the probability of occurrence – analogous to population growth rate - were correlated with traits describing the fast-slow continuum of leaf functioning. The elasticity of population growth rate to colonization was significantly related to reproductive plant height and seed mass, and to a lower extent, to leaf carbon isotopic ratio. 4. Synthesis. The functional response of species to management intensification corresponds to a shift along the second axis of a recently identified global spectrum of plant form and function, which maps, to some extent, onto the fast-slow continuum of life-history strategies. By contrast, the elasticity of colonization relates to the global spectrum axis capturing the size of organs. Seed mass contributes to this axis and is assumed to relate to one of the important traits structuring the reproductive strategy axis of life histories as well, namely net reproductive rate. While this mapping between functional and life-history traits is appealing, further tests in contrasting types of communities are required to assess its degree of generality.

Nutrient supplies to plants from ants are well known from specialised myrmecophytic symbioses and from plants growing in soil close to ant nests. However, above-ground nutrient pathways may play a largely unrecognised role also in less specialised ant–plant interactions—the numerous facultative relationships, where ants forage on plants. In a laboratory experiment, weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) were confined to the canopies of coffee (Coffea arabica) seedlings, excluding any ant-to-plant transfer of nutrients via the soil strata. When ants were fed 15N-labelled glycine and subsequently deposited faecal droplets on the seedlings, coffee leaves showed increased levels of 15N and total nitrogen compared to control plants without ants. This was evident for both exposed leaves and leaves covered in plastic bags (i.e. not directly exposed to ants). Thus, nitrogen from ant excretions was absorbed through the coffee leaves, and subsequently, translocated within the plants and possibly leading to the observed higher shoot/root (wet weight) ratios observed on ant-plants compared to controls. Synthesis. These results reveal an undescribed foliar uptake of ant-provided nutrients. If this is a general mechanism, a vast amount of ant–plant interactions involves fertilisation. Foliar fertilisation by ants may be an important steady benefit to plants, which has driven the evolution of ant–plant mutualisms in parallel with the well-recognised but probably more fluctuating benefit from herbivore protection. Given the world-wide abundance of plant canopies foraged by ants, this nutrient pathway may be of high ecological significance.

1. Semi-natural open habitats in northwestern Europe are highly prioritized for conservation and optimization of management planning is essential for continued protection of their diversity. We evaluate whether current management practices, which consist mainly of summer grazing by livestock, are sufficient to maintain plant species composition in a stable state across semi-natural areas in Denmark, or if shifts in functional composition are taking place. Further, we investigate important drivers of any on-going changes through trait differences between winner and loser species. 2. Using a dataset of 6513 annually inventoried (2004–2010) vegetation plots from 202 semi-natural NATURA 2000 protected areas, we assessed changes in cover of all plant species and, using boosted regression trees, whether winners and losers differ in regard to autecological characteristics and traits. 3. There were consistent changes in cover for 123 out of 603 species across the six-year study period, with more species losing than winning (78 versus 45). Winner and loser species were strongly differentiated by competition-related traits, but traits related to soil nutrients and soil moisture also had some importance. Generally, our results indicate a trend towards a species composition consisting of taller and more competitive species. 4. Synthesis and applications. Despite conservation actions in order to maintain so-called favourable conservation status, vegetation in NATURA 2000 protected areas is still undergoing compositional changes. Overall, autecological characteristics and trait differences between winners and losers match expectations given the contemporary anthropogenic pressures, especially with reduced livestock grazing. Atmospheric nitrogen deposition and increased soil moisture due to reduced drainage might also be involved in observed changes. Current management (i.e. summer grazing by livestock) is insufficient to preserve the diversity of less-competitive, low-statured and stress-tolerant herbaceous species, potentially leading to species losses. Such patterns can thus be expected across semi-natural ecosystems in northwestern Europe and other places where traditional land use (i.e. previous widespread extensive livestock grazing) have been replaced with various degrees of conservation management. A greater focus on returning large grazing herbivores to conservation areas is recommended for the protection of plant species diversity and to counteract on-going changes.

The impact of landscape structure and land management on dispersal of populations of wild species inhabiting the agricultural landscape was investigated focusing on the field vole (Microtus agrestis) in three different areas in Denmark using molecular genetic markers. The main hypotheses were the following: (i) organic farms act as genetic sources and diversity reservoirs for species living in agricultural areas and (ii) gene flow and genetic structure in the agricultural landscape are influenced by the degree of landscape complexity and connectivity. A total of 443 individual voles were sampled within 2 consecutive years from two agricultural areas and one relatively undisturbed grassland area. As genetic markers, 15 polymorphic microsatellite loci (nuclear markers) and the central part of the cytochrome-b (mitochondrial sequence) were analysed for all samples. The results indicate that management (that is, organic or conventional management) was important for genetic population structure across the landscape, but that landscape structure was the main factor shaping gene flow and genetic diversity. More importantly, the presence of organically managed areas did not act as a genetic reservoir for conventional areas, instead the most important predictor of effective population size was the amount of unmanaged available habitat (core area). The relatively undisturbed natural area showed a lower level of genetic structuring and genetic diversity compared with the two agricultural areas. These findings altogether suggest that political decisions for supporting wildlife friendly land management should take into account both management and landscape structure factors.