The popularity of using traits data in ecology has increased a lot in the last years. Traits can be used to describe species communities across different regions and how they respond to environmental change, and much more.

The goal of OpenTraits is to increase our global knowledge of traits from different organisms by

• Developing shared data standards;
• Developing open-source tools and techniques for gathering, cleaning, curating, and analyzing trait data;
• Developing methods for the prioritization of trait sampling;
• Increasing collaboration among trait researchers; and
• Organizing trait sampling efforts for priority regions, taxa and traits.

If you are interested to learn more about OpenTraits, there is a blog post on the Functional Ecologist blog and there will be a workshop prior to the Ecological Society of America annual meetings, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (August 4-5, 2018).