Phenotypic microevolution in plant quantitative traits.

This database included studies that provide data of changes in quantitative traits of angiosperms within a known temporal framework (<300 years). The search was performed by Scopus (www.scopus.com), up to 22 December 2015 (search strings in Gorné and Díaz 2017). The database includes studies that measured intraspecific change in a quantitative trait and which report the elapsed time when the phenotypic change occurred. The studies recorded a single population before and after a change in the environment or compared two (or more) populations by measuring a quantitative trait across two situations, where one of them was a new condition of known age. Both, by measuring change directly in the field or by performing common condition experiments (e.g. common garden experiments or reciprocal transplants). Studies reporting results from artificial selection or interspecific hybridization were excluded. The environmental changes included expansions of distributional range, soil or air pollution, exposure to herbicides, changes in salinity, pH, climate, disturbance or irrigation regime, and addition or loss of species in the local community. All data available in each study were recorded, including several observations of the same species. All data points were categorized according to biological properties of the study system (lifespan, growth form, trait type) and methodological ones. The amount and rate of phenotypic change is expresed as the standardized mean difference Hedges g (Hedges 1981, 1982), a rate of change which is the Hedges g over the elapsed time in years, and the log-transformation of both of them. The standardized mean difference is equal to the haldane numerator, which is a standard rate of evolution (Haldane 1949; Gingerich 1993)

Conjunto de datos de retención de semillas

Detalle de las variables incluidas en el archivo Lipoma_etal_database_2019.txtNot gone with the wind: Vegetation complexity increases seed retention during windy periods in the Argentine Semiarid Chaco.Fil: Lipoma, María Lucrecia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Lipoma, María Lucrecia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Cuchietti, Anibal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Cuchietti, Anibal. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Gorné, Lucas D. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Gorné, Lucas D. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Díaz, Sandra M. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Díaz, Sandra M. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina

Conjunto de datos de retención de semillas

Detalle de las variables incluidas en el archivo Lipoma_etal_database_2019.txtNot gone with the wind: Vegetation complexity increases seed retention during windy periods in the Argentine Semiarid Chaco.Fil: Lipoma, María Lucrecia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Lipoma, María Lucrecia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Cuchietti, Anibal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Cuchietti, Anibal. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Gorné, Lucas D. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Gorné, Lucas D. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Díaz, Sandra M. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Díaz, Sandra M. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina

The acquisitive-conservative axis of leaf trait variation emerges even in homogeneous environments

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The acquisitive-conservative axis of plant ecological strategies results in a pattern of leaf trait covariation that captures the balance between leaf construction costs and plant growth potential. Studies evaluating trait covariation within species are scarcer, and have mostly dealt with variation in response to environmental gradients. Little work has been published on intraspecific patterns of leaf trait covariation in the absence of strong environmental variation. METHODS: We analysed covariation of four leaf functional traits [specific leaf area (SLA) leaf dry matter content (LDMC), force to tear (Ft) and leaf nitrogen content (Nm)] in six Poaceae and four Fabaceae species common in the dry Chaco forest of Central Argentina, growing in the field and in a common garden. We compared intraspecific covariation patterns (slopes, correlation and effect size) of leaf functional traits with global interspecific covariation patterns. Additionally, we checked for possible climatic and edaphic factors that could affect the intraspecific covariation pattern. KEY RESULTS: We found negative correlations for the LDMC-SLA, Ft-SLA, LDMC-Nm and Ft-Nm trait pairs. This intraspecific covariation pattern found both in the field and in the common garden and not explained by climatic or edaphic variation in the field follows the expected acquisitive-conservative axis. At the same time, we found quantitative differences in slopes among different species, and between these intraspecific patterns and the interspecific ones. Many of these differences seem to be idiosyncratic, but some appear consistent among species (e.g. all the intraspecific LDMC-SLA and LDMC-Nm slopes tend to be shallower than the global pattern). CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicates that the acquisitive-conservative leaf functional trait covariation pattern occurs at the intraspecific level even in the absence of relevant environmental variation in the field. This suggests a high degree of variation-covariation in leaf functional traits not driven by environmental variables

The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset.

Here we provide the 'Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset', containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits -plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass - define the primary axes of variation in plant form and function. The dataset is based on ca. 1 million trait records received via the TRY database (representing ca. 2,500 original publications) and additional unpublished data. It provides 92,159 species mean values for the six traits, covering 46,047 species. The data are complemented by higher-level taxonomic classification and six categorical traits (woodiness, growth form, succulence, adaptation to terrestrial or aquatic habitats, nutrition type and leaf type). Data quality management is based on a probabilistic approach combined with comprehensive validation against expert knowledge and external information. Intense data acquisition and thorough quality control produced the largest and, to our knowledge, most accurate compilation of empirically observed vascular plant species mean traits to date

The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset.

Here we provide the 'Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset', containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits -plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass - define the primary axes of variation in plant form and function. The dataset is based on ca. 1 million trait records received via the TRY database (representing ca. 2,500 original publications) and additional unpublished data. It provides 92,159 species mean values for the six traits, covering 46,047 species. The data are complemented by higher-level taxonomic classification and six categorical traits (woodiness, growth form, succulence, adaptation to terrestrial or aquatic habitats, nutrition type and leaf type). Data quality management is based on a probabilistic approach combined with comprehensive validation against expert knowledge and external information. Intense data acquisition and thorough quality control produced the largest and, to our knowledge, most accurate compilation of empirically observed vascular plant species mean traits to date