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Abstract

Ecological multifunctionality quantifies
the functional performance of various important plant
traits and increases with growing structural habitat
heterogeneity, number of plant functional traits, and
species richness. However, the successional changes
in multifunctionality have not been traced so far. We
use quantitative plant samples of 1 m2 plots from the
first 6 years of initial vegetation dynamics in a German
created catchment to infer the temporal changes in
plant functional trait space and multifunctionality. Multifunctionality at the plot level was in all study
years lower than expected from a random sample of
the local pool of potential colonizers and was lowest at
intermediate states of succession. In each year species
containing a specific set of traits occurred with limited
but focused functionality. The observed average low
degree of multifunctionality contrasts with recent
models predicting a tendency towards maximum
multifunctionality during plant community development.
However, variability in multifunctionality
among plots increased during succession and the
respective multifunctionality distribution among plots was increasingly right skewed indicating an excess of
plots with relatively high multifunctionality. This
relative excess of plots with high multifunctionality
might act as an important trigger of community
development paving the way for new species and functions to become established.