Functional traits explaining plant responses to past and future climate changes

Climate change ("global warming") is expected to exert serious negative effects on biodiversity. Knowledge and understanding of non-anthropogenic climate changes in previous geological eras may improve predictions about ongoing trends. In this context plant functional traits can be useful tools – the ecotype variations and plasticity of morphological, physiological and developmental traits may help to determine which plants or plant groups might overcome present severely and rapidly changing environmental conditions. The mechanisms behind these trait–environment relationships will be relevant e.g. for a more realistic modelling of biogeochemical cycles and species distributions. In this Special Issue topics addressed above will be discussed in detail, grouped into the following sections: (1) Paleoclimate and paleovegetation, (2) Plant Silica and phytoliths, (3) Environmental gradients and intraspecific trait variation, (4) Experimental approaches to test effects of climate change on plant performance and functional traits, (5) Selection of traits – from empirical correlations to mechanistic responses, (6) Responses of plant functional traits and vegetation to global warming. Perspectives for future research on functional plant traits – climate change are discussed for following fields: (i) Clear definition of relevant climate parameters, (ii) a more mechanistic approach for functional plant traits, (iii) intraspecific trait variation, (iv) plant functional traits with respect to disturbances, (v) transplant experiments using whole communities including soil environment, (vi) remote sensing (hyperspectral and LIDAR), (vii) more realistic approaches in vegetation modelling.