Biogeochemistry meets biogeography: how trait-based approaches can help us understand tropical legumes

Fabaceae is a large, diverse, and abundant plant family with origins in the tropics. Many species in this plant family can fix nitrogen through symbiotic relationships with bacteria living in root nodules. This has been a common lens through which biogeochemists seek to understand the distribution and role of this important plant family in tropical ecosystems. However, species in this family have many additional functional traits that distinguish them from co-occurring taxa. Here we discuss how considering a wider range of traits including wood, leaf, seed, and phenological traits can help us better understand the distributions of legumes over biogeographic and ecological gradients (latitudinal, continental, climatic and succession) and their ecosystem-level consequences.