DOI: 10.5061/dryad.k2k08
title: Data from: Recasting the dynamic equilibrium model through a functional lens: the interplay of trait-based community assembly and climate

description: 1. According to the dynamic equilibrium hypothesis (DEH), plant species
 richness is locally controlled by productivity and disturbance. Given that
 regional conditions widely affect local environmental variables such as
 soil nutrient availability, the DEH predictions could be improved by
 considering how climate influences local controls of species richness.
 Further, a trait-based approach to community assembly has the potential to
 reveal a deeper, mechanistic understanding of species richness variation
 across environments. Here we bring together DEH and trait-based community
 assembly expectations to examine if and how local relationships between
 diversity, disturbance and productivity are affected by habitat filtering
 and regional climate. 2. We specifically tested how gradients of local
 nutrient availability and disturbance intensity interact with climatic
 conditions to drive the species richness of grassland communities.
 Further, we recast the DEH through a functional lens by exploring how
 disturbance-diversity and nutrient availability-diversity relationships
 are shaped by the functional space occupied by species in a community and
 species packing within this functional space. 3. The functional space
 occupied by co-occurring species and the way they are functionally packed
 are quantified using multi-trait indices calculated with five core plant
 functional traits. Working with grassland communities spread across
 differing regional climatic conditions, we used mixed models to test if
 the variation in taxonomic and functional metrics corresponded to the
 dynamic equilibrium model's predictions as well as to determine the
 relationship between those metrics. 4. Contrary to the expectations based
 on the relation between species richness and the functional components
 considered, taxonomic and functional metrics did not vary in accordance
 along environmental gradients. Climate strongly interacted with the local
 environment to modulate local diversity patterns, sometimes even inversing
 a given trend and falsifying the DEH predictions. 5. Synthesis. Our
 findings quantitatively highlight the interplay between regional and local
 environmental gradients in driving community assembly. We demonstrate
 that, depending on climatic conditions, observed patterns of both
 taxonomic and functional community composition can be opposite to expected
 productivity-diversity and disturbance-diversity relationships. This
 emphasizes the relevance of multi-faceted studies of biodiversity and the
 need for a more systematic quantification of regional controls in
 community assembly studies.
description: Environmental,
 taxonomic, and functional dataThis file contains i)
 all regional and local environmental variables measured in the field of
 our 8 sites across France, ii) all taxonomic information on the plots of
 every site, and iii) the community-weighted mean of the functional
 variables used in this study. A brief metadata to describe each variable
 was also included. This file contains all the data necessary to reproduce
 the results in our study.Loranger et al. JEcol
 Data_DRYAD.xlsx