Environmental stress shifts community assembly from niche differentiation to trait convergence across Himalayan plant communities

Abstract Understanding mechanisms structuring plant communities is fundamental for predicting biodiversity responses to global change. Functional trait‐based approaches can reveal assembly processes by linking species' adaptations to community‐level patterns, with convergence signalling strong environmental filtering and divergence reflecting niche partitioning or competitive exclusion. In extreme environments, including cold, arid mountains, it remains unresolved whether persistence is governed