Delivering the promises of trait-based approaches to the needs of demographic approaches, and vice versa

1. Few facets of biology vary more than functional traits and life‐history traits. To explore this vast variation, functional ecologists and population ecologists have developed independent approaches that identify the mechanisms behind and consequences of trait variation.

2. Collaborative research between researchers using trait‐based and demographic approaches remains scarce. We argue that this is a missed opportunity, as the strengths of both approaches could help boost the research agendas of functional ecology and population ecology.

3. This special feature, which spans three journals of the British Ecological Society due to its interdisciplinary nature, showcases state‐of‐the‐art research applying trait‐based and demographic approaches to examine relationships between organismal function, life history strategies and population performance across multiple kingdoms. Examples include the exploration of how functional trait × environment interactions affect vital rates and thus explain population trends and species occurrence; the coordination of seed traits and dispersal ability with the pace of life in plants; the incorporation of functional traits in dynamic energy budget models; or the discovery of linkages between microbial functional traits and the fast–slow continuum.

4. Despite their historical isolation, collaborative work between functional ecologists and population ecologists could unlock novel research pathways. We call for an integrative research agenda to evaluate which and when traits are functional, as well as their ability to describe and predict life history strategies and population dynamics. We highlight promising, complementary research avenues to overcome current limitations. These include a more explicit linkage of selection gradients in the context of functional trait–vital rate relationships, and the implementation of standardised protocols to track changes in traits and vital rates over time at the same location and individuals, thus allowing for the explicit incorporation of trade‐offs in analyses of covariation of functional traits and life‐history traits.