TRY - a global database of plant traits

Jens Kattge (1) , Sandra Diaz (2) , Sandra Lavorel (3, 4) , I.C. Prentice (5) , Paul W. Leadley (6) , Gerhard Bonisch (1) , Eric Garnier (7) , Mark Westoby (5) , Peter B. Reich (8) , I. J. Wright (9) , Johannes Hc Cornelissen (10) , Cyrille Violle (7) , Sandy P. Harrison (9) , Peter M van Bodegom (10) , Markus Reichstein (11) , Brian J. Enquist (12) , Nadejda A. Soudzilovskaia (10) , David D. Ackerly (13) , Madhur Anand (14) , Owen Atkin (15) , Michael Bahn (16) , T. R. Baker (17) , D. Baldocchi (18) , R. Bekker (19) , Carolina C. Blanco (20) , Benjamin Blonder (12) , W. J. Bond (21) , Ross Bradstock (22) , Daniel E. Bunker (23) , Fernando Casanoves (24) , Jeannine Cavender-Bares (25) , Jeffrey Q. Chambers (26) , F. Stuart Chapin Iii (27) , Jerome Chave (28) , David Coomes (29) , William K. Cornwell (30) , Joseph M. Craine (31) , B. H. Dobrin (12) , L. Duarte (20) , Walter Durka (32) , James Elser , Gerd A. Esser (33) , Marc Estiarte (34) , William F. Fagan (35) , Jingyun Fang (36) , F. Fernandez-Mendez (37) , Alessandra Fidelis (38) , Brian Finegan (24) , Olivier Flores (39) , Hilary Ford (40) , D. Frank (1) , Grégoire T. Freschet (41) , Nikolaos M. Fyllas (17) , Rachael V. Gallagher (5) , Walton A. Green (42) , Alvaro G. Gutierrez (43) , Thomas Hickler (44) , Steven I. Higgins (45) , J. G. Hodgson (46) , Adel Jalili (47) , Steven Jansen (48) , Carlos A. Joly (49) , Andrew J. Kerkhoff (50) , Don Kirkup (51) , Kaoru Kitajima (52) , Michael Kleyer (53) , Stefan Klotz (32) , Johannes M. H. Knops (54) , Koen Kramer (55) , Ingolf Kuhn (32) , Hiroko Kurokawa (56) , D. Laughlin (57) , T.D. Lee (58) , Michelle Leishman (5) , Frederic Lens (59) , Simon L. Lewis (17) , J. Lloyd (17) , Joan Llusia (34) , Frédérique Louault (60) , S. Ma (61) , M. D. Mahecha (62) , Pete Manning (63) , T. Massad (62) , Belinda E. Medlyn (5) , Julie Messier (12) , Angela T. Moles (63) , Sandra Cristina Muller (20) , Karin Nadrowski (64) , Shahid Naeem (65) , Stephanie Nollert (62) , A. Nuske (62) , Roma Ogaya (34) , Jacek Oleksyn (66) , Vladimir G. Onipchenko (67) , Yusuke Onoda (68) , J. Ordonez (69) , G. Overbeck (70) , Wim Ozinga (55) , S. Patiño (17) , Susana Paula (71, 72) , Juli G. Pausas (73) , Josep Penuelas (34) , O. L. Phillips (17) , V. D. Pillar (20) , H. Poorter (74) , Peter Poschlod (75) , Andreas Prinzing (76) , Raphael Proulx (77) , Anja Rammig (78) , S. Reinsch (79) , B. Reu (1) , L. Sack (80) , B. Salgado-Negret (24) , J. Sardans (34) , Satomi Shiodera (81) , B. Shipley (82) , A. Siefert (83) , Evan Sosinski (84) , Jean-Francois Soussana (85) , E.K. Swaine (85) , N. Swenson (86) , Ken Thompson (87) , P. Thornton (88) , M. Waldram (89) , Evan Weiher (58) , M. White (90) , Sean White (14) , S. Joseph Wright (91) , Benjamin Yguel (76) , Soenke Zaehle (1) , Amy E. Zanne (92)

1 MPI-BGC - Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
2 Insituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Vegetal
3 LECA - Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine
4 SAJF - Station alpine Joseph Fourier - UMS 3370
5 Dpt Biological Sciences, Macquarie University
6 ESE - Ecologie Systématique et Evolution
7 CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive
8 Forest Resources and Institute of the Environment
9 Department of Biological Sciences [North Ryde]
10 Department of Systems Ecology
11 Department of Biogeochemical Integration [Jena]
12 EEB - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology [Tucson]
13 IB - Department of Integrative Biology [Berkeley]
14 School of Environmental Sciences
15 ANU - Australian National University
16 Universität Innsbruck [Innsbruck]
17 Earth and Biosphere Institute
18 Biometeorology lab [Berkeley]
19 University of Groningen [Groningen]
20 UFRGS - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul [Porto Alegre]
21 Department of Botany
22 ICB - UNIV WOLLONGONG - Institute for Conservation Biology
23 NJIT - New Jersey Institute of Technology [Newark]
24 CATIE - Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza - Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center
25 Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, St Paul
26 LBNL - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [Berkeley]
27 Institute of Arctic Biology
28 EDB - Evolution et Diversité Biologique
29 Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge
30 Dept of Systems Ecology
31 Biology, Kansas State University
32 UFZ - Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung = Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
33 Institute for Plant Ecology
34 CEAB - Centre d'Estudis Avançats de Blanes
35 University of Maryland [College Park]
36 University of Peking
37 universidad del Tolima
38 USP - Universidade de São Paulo = University of São Paulo
39 UMR PVBMT - Peuplements végétaux et bioagresseurs en milieu tropical
40 Department of Biology [York]
41 Department of Ecological Science [Amsterdam]
42 Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard
43 Department of Ecological Modelling [UFZ Leipzig]
44 Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science [Lund]
45 Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Frankfurt
46 Unit of Comparative Plant Ecology
47 Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands
48 Institute of Systematic Botany and Ecology
49 UNICAMP - Universidade Estadual de Campinas = University of Campinas
50 Kenyon College
51 Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens
52 UF|Biology - Department of Biology [Gainesville]
53 Landscape Ecology Group
54 Constraint Systems Laboratory
55 Centre for Ecosystem Studies, University of Wageningen
56 Tohoku University [Sendai]
57 Northern Arizona University [Flagstaff]
58 University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
59 Naturalis Biodiversity Center [Leiden]
60 INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
61 Agriculture, Newcastle University
62 MPI-BGC - Max-Planck-Institut für Biogeochemie
63 UNSW - University of New South Wales [Sydney]
64 Special Botany and Functional Biodiversity
65 Columbia University [New York]
66 Dendrology, Polish Academy of Sciences
67 Geobotany, Moscow State University
68 Biology, Kyushu University
69 Law and Governance Group
70 ALTERRA Wageningen
71 CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas [España] = Spanish National Research Council [Spain]
72 CIDE - Centro de Investigaciones sobre Desertificacion
73 CSIC
74 Plant Ecophysiology
75 REGENSBURG - Universität Regensburg
76 ECOBIO - Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution [Rennes]
77 UQTR - Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
78 University of Potsdam = Universität Potsdam
79 Risø DTU - Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy
80 Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
81 Center for Sustainability Science, Hokkaido
82 UdeS - Département de biologie [Sherbrooke]
83 Syracuse University
84 embrapa
85 Biological Sciences, Aberdeen
86 Department of Plant Biology - Michigan State University
87 Department of Animal and Plant Sciences [Sheffield]
88 ORNL - Oak Ridge National Laboratory [Oak Ridge]
89 Department of Geography [Leicester]
90 University of Utah
91 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
92 Department of Biology, Missouri

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs - determine how primary producers respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity. Trait data thus represent the raw material for a wide range of research from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology to biogeography. Here we present the global database initiative named TRY, which has united a wide range of the plant trait research community worldwide and gained an unprecedented buy-in of trait data: so far 93 trait databases have been contributed. The data repository currently contains almost three million trait entries for 69 000 out of the world's 300 000 plant species, with a focus on 52 groups of traits characterizing the vegetative and regeneration stages of the plant life cycle, including growth, dispersal, establishment and persistence. A first data analysis shows that most plant traits are approximately log-normally distributed, with widely differing ranges of variation across traits. Most trait variation is between species (interspecific), but significant intraspecific variation is also documented, up to 40% of the overall variation. Plant functional types (PFTs), as commonly used in vegetation models, capture a substantial fraction of the observed variation - but for several traits most variation occurs within PFTs, up to 75% of the overall variation. In the context of vegetation models these traits would better be represented by state variables rather than fixed parameter values. The improved availability of plant trait data in the unified global database is expected to support a paradigm shift from species to trait-based ecology, offer new opportunities for synthetic plant trait research and enable a more realistic and empirically grounded representation of terrestrial vegetation in Earth system models.

Mots clés: comparative ecology; database; environmental gradient; functional diversity; global analysis; global change; interspecific variation; intraspecific variation; plant attribute; plant functional type; plant trait; vegetation model

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie

Jens Kattge, Sandra Diaz, Sandra Lavorel, I.C. Prentice, Paul W. Leadley, et al.. TRY - a global database of plant traits. Global Change Biology, 2011, 17 (9), pp.2905-2935. ⟨10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02451.x⟩. ⟨hal-00639535⟩