Properties of the plant world recorded

Global directory of plant traits boosts biodiversity and climate research.
The world's largest database of plant traits, TRY, has been published. A joint project of over 100 international research institutes, TRY brings together 93 individual databases. This means that the key characteristics of over 20% of all plant species occurring worldwide are summarized in one place. Initial evaluations have shown that plants are more variable in their characteristics than previously assumed. The constantly growing database, operated by the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, is available to all scientists involved in biodiversity and earth system research.
 

As primary producers, plants are at the bottom of the food chain. Their diversity has a significant influence on the number and diversity of subsequent members of the food chain. If the number of plant species in a biological habitat (ecosystem) decreases, the diversity of herbivores and later of the subsequent omnivores and carnivores also decreases. But that's not all: the interactions with the environment, e.g. the exchange of substances with the soil and the atmosphere, also change when plant biodiversity decreases.

Due to changes in land use and climate change, plant species are dying out on our planet every day, at a historically unprecedented rate and before their ecological importance has been recognized. The exact impact of plant diversity on the Earth's environmental and climate system, and therefore on the living conditions of humans, is currently insufficiently researched. The biggest bottleneck to date has been the limited availability of data on the ecological and functional properties of plant species.

More than 200 scientists worldwide have therefore joined forces to fill this knowledge gap. Under the umbrella of DIVERSITAS and IGBP, two UNESCO organizations for biodiversity and global environmental research, a worldwide database of functional plant traits (TRY) has been created from 93 different databases to date. Coordinated by Dr. Jens Kattge and Dr. Gerhard Bönisch from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena and Prof. Dr. Christian Wirth from the University of Leipzig, TRY currently contains over three million entries on functional traits of around one fifth (70,000) of all known plant species. Traits relating to the key processes of growth, distribution, establishment and stress tolerance were recorded. “After around four years of intensive development work, we are proud to be able to present the first version of the database,” says Dr. Jens Kattge, lead author of the study published in Global Change Biology.

An initial evaluation has shown that the usual functional classifications are not sufficient to explain the wide range of variation in plant characteristics. “Global climate and vegetation models differentiate between around 10 functional plant types, such as grasses, shrubs or trees, but these are usually unable to capture the observed variations in plant characteristics,” explains Prof. Dr. Christian Wirth. Instead, the range of variation is essentially caused by species differences. Species diversity is therefore a decisive factor for functional versatility and the adaptability of ecosystems to changing environmental conditions.

The TRY database is available to all plant, environmental and climate researchers and is continuously being expanded with data from new cooperation partners. “The scale of the global challenges also requires new dimensions in the scientific approach, in terms of the size of the networks and the intensity of the collaborations,” says Prof. Sandra Díaz from the University of Cordoba, Argentina, co-author of the study, confirming the successful concept of the TRY initiative. It is to be expected that the global TRY database will provide significant impetus for biodiversity research and the improvement of biologically based climate models.