Species extinction risk at local scales can be partially offset by strategies promoting in-situ persistence. We explored how persistence-related traits of clonal and non-clonal plants in temperate dry grasslands respond intra- and interspecifically to variation in environmental conditions (soil, climate) and insularity. We focused on edaphic island specialist species, hypothesizing that plants experiencing harsh soil environments and strong insularity are distinguished by traits supporting enhanced persistence, such as small stature, long lifespan and resource-conservative strategies. We found general support for this hypothesis. Soil properties and insularity emerged as the most important drivers of trait patterns. However, clonal species showed more consistent responses to variation in environmental conditions and insularity than non-clonal plants, which were characterized by distinct species-specific responses. We call for a broader inclusion of persistence-related traits in plant ecology and biogeography; this may provide key insights for predicting species extinction risk in changing and insular environments.

The volume of scientific publications is ever increasing, making it difficult for scholars to publish papers that can capture the readers’ attention. An obvious way to attract readership is by making a truly significant discovery; yet another way may involve tweaking the language to overemphasize the novelty of results. Using a dataset of 52,236 paper abstracts published between 1997 and 2017 in 17 ecological journals, we found that the relative frequency of the use of novelty terms (e.g., ‘groundbreaking’, ‘new’) almost doubled over time. Conversely, we found no such pattern with the use of confirmatory terms (e.g., ‘replicated’, ‘reproducibility’). We argue that, while increasing research opportunities are triggering advances in ecology, the writing style of authors and publishing habits of journals should better reflect the inherent confirmatory nature of ecology.