Recent developments in the context of the TRY Plant Trait Database

Abstract

Plant traits - morphological, anatomical, biochemical, physiological or phenological features measurable at the level of individuals or their component organs or tissues - reflect the outcome of evolutionary and community assembly processes responding to abiotic and biotic environmental constraints. Therefore, measurements of plant traits and trait syndromes (consistent associations of plant traits) are valuable observations to evaluate models based on eco-evolutionary optimality (EEO) principles. In 2007 the TRY database project (https://www.try-db.org/) was initiated to improve the empirical basis for trait-based ecological studies, trying to bring together the different plant trait databases worldwide. As a result, the TRY Plant Trait Database has constantly been growing and has accomplished unprecedented coverage. Since 2019 the data are publicly available under a CC BY license. This presentation is supposed to provide an update on recent developments in the context of the TRY initiative, i.e. the recently released new version of the TRY database (version 6), the release of the 'Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset', and the 'rtry' R package to support preprocessing of trait data retrieved from the TRY database.