Linking physiology and demography is the Holy Grail of Plant Ecology. Here I demonstrate the importance of elucidating this linkage to answer urgent questions in functional ecology, community ecology and biogeography. I develop the current attempts that have related plant demography and functional traits and the challenges for future studies including connexion between different existing databases and elaboration of innovative experimental designs. Using a time series from a long-term grassland experimental site, I analyse the linkage between species abundances, population growth rate and plant functional traits as a case study.
Results/Conclusions
The grassland case study indicates that species abundances can be accurately predicted by plant functional traits related to resource use strategies. However any of the studied traits correlated with population-level growth rate assessed over the 30 years studied. The traits most frequently studied in functional ecology have often nothing to do with demography. Interestingly, when focusing on reproductive traits including mating system, I showed significant relationships between species abundances, species’ range sizes and functional traits. This emphasizes the necessity to broaden the set of traits generally proposed in functional ecology to describe and compare the ecological strategies of organisms.