Traits Working Group

Coordinators:
Leonardo Borges, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brazil
Renske Onstein, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Germany

The Traits Working Group continues to serve as a hub to connect researchers working on different aspects of legume morphology, with particular focus on compiling plant functional trait data. The main goals of the Working Group are to foster collaboration and to avoid redundant data collection.

Ongoing trait projects and research groups, a list of legume traits and definitions, and monographs used to extract trait data, are accessible in this google drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Eifg9x5S9ffoXP9A4myDHnKPd2Wm01y

If you work on a project including legume traits, Dr. Onstein suggests accessing the google drive and adding some information on your research project to the “research groups” spreadsheet. Taxonomic monographs provide a rich source of morphological and trait data and the working group is assembling a repository of legume monographs to facilitate the easier harvesting of data. If you have any pdfs of monographs, please deposit them in the “Monographs” folder.

One specific ongoing project is the creation of a functional trait dataset for all mimosoids. Those interested in including their trait data in this database, should e-mail Renske Onstein (onsteinre@gmail.com).

To receive updates and be part of this Working Group, please add your email address to the “Legume Traits WG” document located in the google drive.

At the LPWG meeting in September, four students presented aspects of their research on morphology and functional traits. Francisco Velásquez Puentes (iDiv) presented his project on the role of functional traits in biome evolution in the neotropics. Rachel Souza Ferreira (iDiv) presented her project on functional traits across mimosoids. Yago Barros-Souza (Universidade Federal de São Carlos) presented his PhD work on the association between phylogenetic diversity and trait disparity in Brazilian vegetation. Monique Maianne Silva (Universidade Federal de São Carlos) presented her work on the evolution of floral morphological diversity in Mimosa.