Tropical forests may be particularly vulnerable to extreme climatic conditions. These forests contribute disproportionately to global ecosystem services, and have dominant effects on global land-atmosphere interactions. Thus, understanding the responses of tropical forests to extreme temperatures and drought remain a major limitation in predicting global vegetation responses to future climate change. Work in my group examines how integration of anatomical, morphological and physiological traits translate to plant performance in changing environmental conditions particularly when experiencing extreme temperature and drought. Can this understanding help predict behaviour of tropical trees in the field; growth, mortality and regeneration over longer time scales; and ultimately, to distribution of species over environmental gradients, and responses of tropical forests to global warming? I highlight this work with two studies. The first, investigated the upper temperature limits of photosynthetic function. We asked how high temperature tolerance was related to morphological and physiological traits, and examined the consequences of this in the context of global warming. Our results show that tropical trees are precariously close to their upper thermal limits, and likely going to be severely affected by future warming. Importantly, thermotolerance differed between species and was related to leaf functional traits and photosynthetic rates. In the second study, we investigated water-use strategies in tropical trees, examining water uptake under well watered condition, and drought tolerance when water was limited. We asked if water uptake and drought tolerance were related to stem xylem anatomical traits, and tested the relationship between water transport efficiency and safety. Xylem size was positively related to water uptake, but negatively related to drought tolerance, resulting in a tradeoff where water uptake and growth under well watered conditions was negatively related to drought tolerance when water was limiting. These results suggest that tropical trees with acquisitive resource use strategies may be more negatively affected by increased temperatures and drought, and future climates may favour slower growing species with conservative resource use strategies.