DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2280gb602
title: Data from: Temperature drives seagrass recovery across the Western North Atlantic

description: Climate-driven shifts in herbivores, temperature and nutrient runoff
 threaten coastal ecosystem resilience. However, our understanding of
 ecological resilience, particularly for foundation species, remains
 limited due to a rarity of field experiments that are conducted across
 appropriate spatial and temporal scales and that investigate multiple
 stressors. This study aimed to evaluate the resilience of a tropical
 marine plant (turtlegrass) to disturbances across its geographic range and
 how this is impacted by environmental gradients in abiotic and biotic
 factors. We assessed the resilience (i.e. recovery) of turtlegrass to a
 simulated disturbance (complete above- and belowground biomass removal)
 over a year. Contrary to temperate studies, higher temperature generally
 enhanced seagrass recovery. While nutrients and light availability had
 minimal impact, combined high levels of nutrients and herbivore grazing
 (meso and megaherbivore) reduced aboveground recovery. Our results suggest
 that the resilience of some tropical species, especially in cooler
 subtropical waters, may initially increase with warming.
description: This dataset contains the data collected from field experiments
 studying the impact of fertilization treatments and environmental drivers
 on the recovery rate of the (sub)tropical seagrass species
 <em>Thalassia testudinum</em>. In this study, we
 experimentally disturbed plots of seagrass by removing all above and below
 ground biomass within a 15 cm diameter circle. The experiment was
 conducted at 10 sites across the Western North Atlantic (spanning 20
 degrees of latitude) with natural variation in environmental drivers. In
 addition, we applied fertilization treatments to test the effect of
 experimental nutrient addition on seagrass recovery rates (N = 5). During
 one year post-disturbance, we measured the recovery of <em>T.
 testudinum</em> shoots as well as several environmental drivers
 (temperature, light, nutrient availability, fish and turtle grazing
 pressure), and after one year we quantified the recovery of the number of
 shoots and the amount of above- and below ground biomass within the
 disturbed patch. We used a generalised mixed model approach to assess what
 factors are driving above- and below ground recovery rates.
description: # Data from: Temperature drives seagrass recovery across the Western North
 Atlantic
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2280gb602](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2280gb602) **Creators:** Fee O.H. Smulders (Wageningen University & Research, Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands) ORCID:0000-0003-4124-8355 Marjolijn J.A. Christianen (Wageningen University & Research, Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands) ORCID:0000-0003-4124-8355 **Related publication**: Temperature and herbivory drive seagrass recovery potential across the Western North Atlantic ## Description of the data and file structure: **Spatial coverage**: Data was collected In Riddell's Bay, Bermuda; Galveston, Texas; Crystal River, Florida; Sanibel, Florida; Eleuthera, The Bahamas (2 sites); Puerto Morelos, Mexico; Barcadera Bay, Aruba; Lac Bay, Bonaire; Bocas del Toro, Panama **Temporal coverage**: Field data was collected in the period of Sept 2018 - November 2019. ## Sharing/Access information This dataset contains the following files: * Datafile Thalassia_Recovery_Dataset * Metadata file (.csv) with explanations of all variables per datasheet ## Code/Software Code file Thalassia_Recovery_Rscript includes the statistical analyses conducted in the manuscript.