5 | Conclusions
Our study highlighted that the influence of functional traits on
flowering phenology is far more greater than abiotic factors under N
addition and plant diversity loss in an assemblage grasslands through a
common garden experiment, and the driver of flowering phenology was
varied with phenological stages, which suggests that functional traits
should include in phenology models to improve prediction of the response
of phenology to global changes. Moreover, advance in the last flowering
day and shortened in flowering duration is accompanied with the increase
of flower numbers, which indicated that changes in functional traits not
only altered the flowering phenology, but also heralded the changes in
reproductive strategy of plants under global changes.