Tropical ecosystems contain the world's largest biodiversity of vascular plants. Yet, our understanding of tropical functional diversity and its contribution to global diversity patterns is constrained by data availability. This discrepancy underscores an urgent need to bridge data gaps by incorporating comprehensive tropical root data into global datasets. Here, we provide a database of tropical root characteristics. This new...

Halimeda bioherms on the Northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) extend for over 6000 km 2 . To explore the ecological and biogeographical importance of these bioherms was one of the aims of a recent voyage on the Research Vessel (RV) Investigator . Through the use of underwater images and habitat sampling, we found populations of Heteropsammia cochlea (Spengler, 1781) living in the bioherms. The scleractinian coral genus Heteropsam...