Resistance of plant–plant networks to biodiversity loss and secondary extinctions following simulated environmental changes

1. Plant interactions are fundamental processes for structuring plant communities and are an important mechanism governing the response of plant species and communities to environmental changes. Thus, understanding the role played by the interaction network in modulating the impact of environmental changes on plant community composition and diversity is crucial. Here, we aimed to develop a new analytical and conceptual framework to evaluate the responses of plant communities to environmental changes. 2. This framework uses functional traits as sensitivity measures for simulated environmental changes and assesses the consequences of microhabitat loss. We show here its application to an alpine plant community where we recorded functional traits (specific leaf area [SLA] and leaf dry matter content [LDMC]) of all plants associated with three foundation species or the surrounding open areas. We then simulated primary species loss based on different scenarios of environmental change and expl...