Abstract

Why do some habitats support a wealth of plant species while others harbor only a few? A recent study by Prinzing et al. (2025), published in Global Ecology and Biogeography, addresses this fundamental ecological question by examining 6,851 vegetation plots across 38 habitat types in the Netherlands. Focusing exclusively on angiosperms (flowering plants), the researchers sought to determine whether local species richness is better explained by ongoing ecological assembly processes or by historical diversification events that shaped the regional species pools.