Functional traits and life history strategies
Measuring plant characteristics which affect their performance
Trait-based approaches in ecology allow us to understand environmental drivers that shape characteristics and functions of plant communities, describe and classify ecosystems, and anticipate the potential response of ecosystems to global change. In savannas and grasslands where disturbances have shaped and maintained vegetation dynamics throughout evolutionary history, many plant traits and life history strategies are associated with surviving regimes of fire, herbivory, seasonal flooding and drought (Bond and Midegley, 2001; Bond, 2005; Bond, 2019). To understand disturbance dynamics, the importance of standardised data and suitable methods for sampling a spectrum of plant functional traits and life forms in grassy biomes are highlighted in the handbook by Wigley et al. (2020).