TABLE 1.
Definitions and abbreviations
| Adaptation | Adaptation refers to heritable, genotypic traits – in contrast to acclimatization – that change a plant's phenotype and physiology and make the organism more fit for a specific environment (Novoplansky, 2002). An adaptive trait denotes a trait that confers a fitness advantage (Schmitt et al., 1999) and has evolved through natural selection over several generations. |
| Canopy |
The canopy is the aboveground portion of a plant community, formed by the collection of individual plant crowns (Campbell & Norman, 1989). In general, traits describing canopy architecture include the number, size, shape, distribution and orientation of their leaves (Duursma et al., 2012; Niinemets, 2010; Rahman, Duursma, Muktadir, Roberts, & Atwell, 2018)
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| Competition | Competition describes the negative effects on growth of resource restrictions due to neighbouring organisms (Aphalo, Ballaré, & Scopel, 1999). Intra‐specific competition refers to competition between individuals of the same species, for example in crop monocultures; whereas inter‐specific competition refers to competition between different species, for example crop‐weed competition or naturally mixed‐species vegetations. |
| Phenotypic plasticity | Phenotypic plasticity is the capacity of an individual plant to express different phenotypes in response to environmental variation (Aphalo et al., 1999; Schmitt et al., 1999; Smith & Whitelam, 1997). |
| Shade‐avoidance syndrome (SAS) | The shade‐avoidance syndrome refers to the multiple responses of a plant to shade and changes in light quality caused by neighbouring plants (Ballaré & Pierik, 2017; Roig‐Villanova & Martínez‐García, 2016; Smith & Whitelam, 1997):
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