1. Introduction and background; 2. Plant strategies and successional change: a resource-response perspective; 3. Community composition and trends of dominance and diversity in recovering ecosystems; 4. The environment of successional plants: disentangling causes and consequences; 5. Recruitment in successional habitats: general trends and specific differences; 6. How do plants interact with each other?; 7. Plant/plant interactions and ecosystem recovery; 8. Competition and the evolution of response breadths and niches; 9. Ecological and genetic variation in early successional plants; 10. Coping with a variable environment: habitat selection, response flexibility: tracking, acclimation, and plasticity; 11. Physiological trends of plant in recovering ecosystems; 12. Crossing the scales: can we predict community composition from individual species response?; 13. From fields to forests: forest dynamics and regeneration in a changing environment; 14. Succession and global change: the implications of migration, extinction, and adaptation; References; Index.