The National Science Foundation has awarded Center for Watershed Sciences Senior Researcher Jonathan Walter, and colleagues at the University of Wyoming and New Mexico State University, new funding to develop and test new conceptual frameworks concerning the role of species’ functional traits in mediating the stability of population and community dynamics. Functional traits refer to measurable characteristics of a species and can include aspects of reproductive potential, tolerance of unfavorable environmental conditions, and movement. The project investigates stability through the lens of synchrony, the tendency for fluctuations in the abundances of populations in different places, or among different interacting species, to be positively related (similar) through time. Synchrony and stability are closely linked, as synchrony leads to greater variability and fragility in many kinds of environmental systems. The project, titled “The role of functional traits in population and community synchrony” will focus initially on grassland plants, as greater availability of data and other resources make an ideal testbed for new ideas, but Walter expects to adapt lessons learned from this work to better understand responses of aquatic systems to changing environmental drivers.