1,2,5,6,- 1Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany (jkattge@bgc-jena.mpg.de)
- 2German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany
- 3University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
- 4Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal, Cordoba, Argentina
- 5Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine (LECA) CNRS, Grenoble, France
- 6Imperial College London, Faculty of Natural Science, Department of Life Sciences,, London, United Kingdom
- 7University of Paris-Sud, Ecology, Systematics and Evolution Laboratory (ESE), Orsay, France
Plant traits - morphological, anatomical, biochemical, physiological, or phenological characteristics measurable at the individual level (Violle et al., 2007) - connect species richness with ecosystem functional diversity. Focusing on traits and trait syndromes offers a promising foundation for a more quantitative and predictive approach to biodiversity, ecology, and global change science. Although plant traits have been compiled for many years, a comprehensive database has been absent. In 2007, the IGBP and DIVERSITAS initiative ‘Refining Plant Functional Classifications’ asked the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry to develop a global plant trait database supporting biodiversity research, functional biogeography, and vegetation modelling. This initiative was named TRY. With contributions from several original datasets and the most extensive integrated datasets available at the time, the TRY Database rapidly achieved unprecedented data coverage. Since 2015, dataset owners have been able to make datasets in TRY public, and since 2019, data in TRY are freely available by default under a CC-BY license. Since then, the database has received approximately 40,000 requests - about 20 daily. In summary, TRY has become a central hub for plant trait data.
In the context of TRY, trait data are curated to some degree: taxonomy and trait names are consolidated; for continuous traits with more than 1,000 records, units are standardized, major errors are corrected, and flags for outliers and duplicates are added. Data are provided in a versioned format. The current version, TRY vs. 6.0, was released in 2022. It is based on 707 datasets and contains 15.4 million trait records for 2,675 traits and 306,000 taxa - mostly species.
The upcoming version, TRY vs 7.0, is expected to be released in spring or summer 2026. It will be based on 907 datasets and include approximately 23.4 million trait records across 3,317 traits. The presentation will focus on the upcoming version, providing details on the new coverage and outlining plans to further develop the TRY Database.
Reference:
Violle, C., Navas, M. L., Vile, D., Kazakou, E., Fortunel, C., Hummel, I., & Garnier, E. (2007). Let the concept of trait be functional! Oikos, 116(5), 882–892. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2007.0030-1299.15559.x
How to cite: Kattge, J., Bönisch, G., Schellenberger Costa, D., Díaz, S., Lavorel, S., Prentice, I. C., Leadley, P., and Wirth, C.: TRY plant trait database – the upcoming version and plans for further development, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-365, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-365, 2026.
