Cadotte and Tucker, in the recent issue of TREE (pp. 429–437) ask the question whether the concept of environmental filtering should be abandoned. Environmental filtering has been defined as the set of abiotic environmental conditions that select for the establishment of a group of species in a given habitat [1,2]. The concept has been popular in community assembly research, particularly for plants [3]. Specifically, Cadotte and Tucker argue that the criteria to determine environmental filtering should include the covariation of traits and demographic parameters along abiotic gradients, expanding on previous work that narrowed the criteria exclusively to mortality rates [2].