Functional traits in arborescent Cactaceae: a guideline for their measurement

Walter F. Paredes Cubas; Kyle G. Dexter; Carlos Reynel Rodríguez; R. Toby Pennington; José Luis Marcelo Peña

doi:10.1071/BT24090

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Functional traits in arborescent Cactaceae: a guideline for their measurement

Walter F. Paredes Cubas

^A , Kyle G. Dexter ^B ^C , Carlos Reynel Rodríguez ^D , R. Toby Pennington ^C ^E and José Luis Marcelo Peña ^A ^*

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A National University of Jaén, ISV Herbarium and Vascular Plant Research Facility, Código Postal 06800, Cajamarca, Peru. Email: walter.paredes@est.unj.edu.pe

^B School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Crew Building, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3FF, UK. Email: Kyle.Dexter@ed.ac.uk

^C Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20a Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR, UK.

^D National Agrarian University La Molina, Herbarium MOLF, La Molina, Peru. Email: reynel@lamolina.edu.pe

^E Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QE, UK. Email: T.Pennington@exeter.ac.uk

^* Correspondence to: jose_marcelo@unj.edu.pe

Handling Editor: Dick Williams

Australian Journal of Botany 73, BT24090 https://doi.org/10.1071/BT24090

Submitted: 11 January 2025 Accepted: 3 July 2025 Published: 28 July 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

The need to understand the impacts of global change on ecosystems has driven interest in studying functional traits, which represent morphological, physiological, or phenological adaptations that determine the ecological performance of organisms. Although standardized methods exist for assessing functional traits in woody and herbaceous plants, protocols for arborescent cacti are still scarce. Cactaceae is a tropical American plant family that reaches high abundance in tropical dry ecosystems and encompasses a great diversity of form and size. Cacti perform fundamental ecosystem functions, are on the list of the most endangered plants globally and represent economically-impactful invasive species outside of the Americas. Here, we propose protocols to measure 12 functional traits in cacti, which are grouped into structural (two traits), morphological (seven traits), hydraulic–mechanical (two traits) and biophysical (one trait) categories, so as to complement ecological studies of plants and improve the understanding of their life cycle and the main environmental challenges faced by cacti.

Keywords: arborescent cacti, biophysical trait, ecological performance, functional traits, hydraulic–mechanical traits, morphological traits, protocol, standardized methods, structural traits, tropical dry ecosystems.

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