Original title: TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access
A plant traitA characteristic of a plant, such as its structure, chemistry, or timing of growth. is a feature such as its shape, chemistry, or timing of growth. The TRY database collects these traits so researchers can study plants and ecosystems. It covers plant growth form for almost all species, but many important traits vary within a species and depend on where each plant grows. The authors find that these measurements still have major gaps and biases, so filling them will take coordinated work across research efforts.
Imagine taking a headcount at a school and recording each student's house team. That is easy to complete, but it does not tell you how tall each student is or how height varies across classes. In this paper, house teams stand for simple plant categories, while measurements of individual students stand for plant features that vary with the conditions where each plant grows. The database has near-complete records for one simple category, but many individual measurements are still missing or unevenly represented.
Researchers use plant traits to study how plants respond to their surroundings and affect ecosystems, from local habitats to earth system models. Knowing where the database is thin helps researchers decide which plants and traits need more measurement before they draw broad conclusions.
The abstract evaluates the database’s coverage and representativeness; it does not establish that its records are complete or unbiased. It says many continuously varying traits remain poorly covered and calls for coordinated data collection, but gives no specific gap sizes or details about which initiatives should take part.
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TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access — Jens Kattge, Gerhard Bönisch, Sandra M. Díaz et al. — Global Change Biology — doi:10.1111/gcb.14904
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.