Assembly Rules, Null Models, and Trait Dispersion: New Questions from Old Patterns

... the same environments are repeated in the same region, their selective action upon the plant immigrants leads to an essentially similar flora in each, and a similar flora produces similar reactions. These conditions produce the well known phenomena of plant associations of recognizable extent and their repetition with great fidelity in many areas of the same region, but they also produce the variable vegetation of our sand dunes and small pools, the fragmentary associations of areas of small size, and the broad transition zones where different types of vegetation are mixed. H. A. Gleason (1926)