Towards a “periodic table” of abiotic stress tolerance strategies of woody plants

The development of Ecological Strategy Schemes (ECSSs) reflects ecologists' long-standing efforts to identify repeatable patterns in nature. All the previous ECSSs are essentially spaces thought to be shaped by biological trade-offs among underlying organismal features. This has pushed research towards the identifications of the organismal trait syndromes setting the spaces’ limits. Recently, a stress tolerance trade-off space (STS) was put forth, defining the limits of abiotic stress tolerance strategies of woody plants worldwide. Here, we propose the STS as a tool for framing the abiotic stress tolerance landscape of woody plants using multiple ecological dimensions, such as traits and habitat climate. We used a recent conceptual framework proposed by Winemiller et al. on “periodic tables of niches” to propose developing a “periodic table” of abiotic stress tolerance of woody plants. We argue that the STS is an essential tool to do that as it allows for mapping important biological features in a single abiotic stress tolerance framework. Adopting this approach will shed light on the multidimensional nature of woody plants’ abiotic stress tolerance strategies.