Land-use legacies and the role of persistence traits in species recovery

Modern-day plant communities often retain imprints of intensive past land use. Do low-intensity land-use practices also produce legacies? In this issue, Jonason et al. (Applied Vegetation Science) demonstrate that, 80 yrs after grassland abandonment, meadow species can recover if habitat improves. I interpret these findings in the context of the spatiotemporal processes that shape regional-scale population dynamics.