Many recent studies proposed using functional trait-based approaches and functional diversity (FD) to address long‐standing ecological questions. Plant functional traits (PFTs) represent key components of biodiversity indicating both how species respond to environmental changes and which functions they deliver to ecosystems. In the last decades, plant functional traits have been widely included in trait‐based studies, because they impact fitness indirectly via effects on growth, reproduction, and survival, thus reflecting the trade‐offs among different physiological and ecological functions. Consequently, examining how traits relate to ecosystem functioning and how this in turn affects the functional structure of communities (e.g., functional diversity) can help us to answer fundamental questions in functional ecology and biodiversity conservation.

In “trait‐based ecology”, the debate is still open on the importance and relative magnitude of interspecific and intraspecific variability, with the latter further decomposed in population-level variability, between-individual variability, and within-individual variability.

Up-scaling PFTs to understand how trait diversity affects ecological processes across different levels of biological organization often implies the calculation of FD, a measurable concept which encompasses many definitions and methodological approaches. Classically, FD has been described as composed of three elements: (1) the amount of functional trait space filled by species in the community (functional richness); (2) the evenness of abundance distribution in filled trait space (functional evenness); and (3) the degree to which the distribution of species abundances maximizes divergence in functional traits (functional divergence).

In this Special Issue dedicated to “Plant Functional Traits and Functional Diversity”, we are calling for innovative insights, original research papers, perspectives, opinions, modelling approaches, and methods on different aspects of PFTs and FD, including:

- Up-scaling trait variation across levels of biological organization;

- PFTs sampling optimization;

- PFTs variation in response to environmental factors with a particular focus on ecological and ecophysiological aspects;

- methodological aspects based on the quantification of FD;

- the use of FD to reveal mechanisms driving community assembly and ecosystem functions;

- the relationships between FD and other aspects of biodiversity, including remote sensing-derived metrics.

Authors having ideas for potential review articles can contact the Editors to discuss the suitability of the topic. Articles proposing and discussing brand-new open-source solutions for the analysis of PFT and FD are very welcome.

Prof. Dr. Giovanni Bacaro
Dr. Enrico Tordoni
Dr. Francesco Petruzzellis
Guest Editors

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