DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh88
title: Data and code from: Is a plant truly plastic? Nutrients and neighbours induce trait-specific responses, but performance depends on response direction

description: Plants live in a heterogeneous world, where nutrient and neighbour
 distributions vary in space and time. Plants can respond to this variation
 through plastic responses in individual organs, which are assumed to be
 coordinated among traits to support a coherent, adaptive strategy,
 maintaining plant growth in varying environments. However, this assumption
 remains understudied. Here, we test coordination in trait plasticity and
 its influence on plant performance. We do so among 27 naturally
 co-occurring species under four different neighbour and soil fertility
 contexts using data from two mesocosm experiments manipulating nutrients
 and neighbour presence. We focus on commonly-studied resource-acquisitive
 traits: specific leaf area (SLA), root tissue density (RTD), and specific
 root length (SRL). We found species exhibited plasticity in SLA, RTD, and
 SRL 50-75 % of the time and that responses to neighbours were stronger
 than nutrients for SLA and RTD, but not SRL. However, plastic responses
 were highly modular, correlated &lt; 10 % of the time, and
 had little coordination consistent with the trait economics paradigm.
 Consequences of plasticity for plant performance depended on the trait,
 the response direction, and whether plants were responding to nutrients or
 neighbours. Plasticity in RTD was unrelated to performance, but species
 that increased their SRL under low nutrient conditions performed worse
 than those showing no SRL plasticity, while SRL responses to neighbours
 had no effect. Similarly, species that increased SLA under low nutrients
 or with neighbours showed reduced performance compared to those that
 decreased SLA in those same conditions. Overall, plasticity in SLA, RTD,
 and SRL rarely manifested as a correlated or coordinated response
 promoting growth maintenance in our study. Instead, plasticity’s
 consequences hinged on the direction of trait shifts, sometimes incurring
 costs. Future studies should consider plasticity a directional phenomenon.
description: # Data and code from: Is a plant truly plastic? Nutrients and neighbours
 induce trait-specific responses, but performance depends on response
 direction Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh88](10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh88)
 ## Description of the data and file structure Data and code for "Is a
 Plant Truly Plastic? Nutrients and Neighbours Induce Trait-Specific
 Responses, but Performance Depends on Response Direction" Dataset:
 dataset where data came from Spp: 3-letter species code Block: block
 number within each mesocosm study Nitrogen: whether the mesocosm was
 fertilized (1) or not (0) Compete: whether the focal plant in mesocosm
 underwent competition (1) or not (0) CompeteWith: unique id for competing
 neighbour id: unique id Tot_BioFin_g: total biomass (shoot and root) of
 focal plant. units in grams. AvgSLA_cm2mg: average specific leaf area of 3
 leaves of focal plant. units in cm2/mg. RTD_mg_cm3: root tissue density of
 focal plant. units in mg/cm3 SRL_cm_mg: specific root length of focal
 plant, units in cm/mg. Trt: treatment category (one of 4, full factorial
 of with and without competition and with and without fertilization) 
 
 Note: Cells equal to "NA" means "Not Applicable" or
 data that were not recorded. ## Code/software R (v. 4.2.0)