Plant Functional Traits—Concepts, Applications and Future Directions

Abstract

Plant functional traits are plant core attributes closely related to plant colonization, survival, growth and mortality. These core attributes could significantly affect ecosystem functions and reflect the response of vegetation to environmental change. There is growing recognition that many ecological questions at various levels can be addressed effectively with key functional traits. In this paper, we review key research progress over the last 10 years addressing important ecological issues based on functional traits, including global distribution patterns of functional traits and their associations, variation of traits distribution along environmental gradients, functional diversity and its application, mechanisms of community assembly and dynamics regarding functional traits, the relationship between traits and phylogeny, the effect and response of functional traits to ecosystem functions and disturbance. In addition, we also provide a future outlook, including research directions, methods and applications based on functional traits in plant science. Specially, we propose that functional traits can also be used as indicators or reference for biodiversity conservation and management of ecosystems under the current global climate change. China has a huge territory, which brings great natural recourses of geography and plants, providing a huge natural database for research on functional traits.