The future of tropical forests depends on successful natural regeneration, yet seedling performance may be jeopardized in degraded landscapes, and this may be aggravated by changing climate conditions. While much trait-based research has focused on adult trees in mature forests, seedlings represent a key life stage where the effects of global change may be particularly pronounced. Understanding how early life-stages respond to changing environmental conditions is critical for predicting the resilience of degraded tropical landscapes under future climate scenarios.

This symposium aims to bring together researchers using trait-based approaches to provide new insights into seedling responses to environmental stress. Functional ecology helps us to understand stress tolerance, plant responses to altered rainfall patterns and to soil degradation, as well as the role of phenotypic plasticity over ontogeny. Furthermore, trait-based studies can reveal patterns of plant community assembly under novel climate regimes. Overall, functional traits have emerged as key indicators of plant-climate dynamics, offering mechanistic insights of ecological processes.

Despite the wealth of knowledge about adult plant traits, seedling traits are less well-characterized, especially in field settings. Given the significant trait variation over ontogeny, this symposium will focus on seedling-specific traits to advance our understanding of how early developmental stages respond to environmental stress. We seek to cover a global range of tropical biomes, with contributions from diverse geographic regions and researchers at different career stages.