FE: Brad Butterfield speaks with Alan Knapp about his paper on plant facilitation

Alan Knapp interviews Brad Butterfield about his paper "A functional-comparative approach to facilitation between and its context-dependence", part of an upcoming Special Feature on Mechanisms of Plant Competition, and the importance of taking a trait-based approach to plant facilitation. A great deal of research has been conducted on the mechanisms and outcomes of plant competition, what traits help plants compete, but less well understood is how such traits affect the outcome of positive interactions among plants. Butterfield, B. J., Callaway, R. M. (2012), A functional comparative approach to facilitation and its context dependence. Functional Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.12019 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12019/abstract