DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v15dv4227
title: Data from: Trait interactions effects on tropical tree demography depend on the environmental context

description: Although functional traits are defined based on their impact on
 demographic parameters, trait-demography relationships are often reported
 as weak. These weak relationships might be due to disregarding trait
 interactions and environmental contexts, which should modulate species
 trait-demography relationships. We applied different models, including
 boosted regression tree (BRT) models, to investigate changes in the
 relationship between traits and demographic rates of tropical tree species
 in plots along an elevational gradient and among time intervals between
 censuses, analyzing the effect of a strong drought event. Based on a large
 dataset of 18,000 tree individuals from 133 common species, distributed
 among twelve 1-ha plots (habitats) in the Atlantic Forest (Brazil), we
 evaluated how trait interactions and the environmental context influence
 the demographic rates (growth, mortality, and recruitment). Functional
 traits, trait-trait, and trait-habitat interactions predicted demography
 with a good fit through either BRTs or linear mixed-models. Changes in
 growth rates were best related to size (diameter), and mortality rates to
 habitats, while changes in recruitment rates were best related to the
 specific leaf area. Moreover, the influence of traits differed among time
 intervals, and for demographic parameters, habitat affected growth and
 mortality by interacting with diameter. Here, we provide evidence that
 trait-demography relationships can be improved when considering the
 environmental context (space and time) and trait interactions to cope with
 the complexity of changes in the demography of tropical tree communities.
 Thus, to expand predictions of demography based on functional traits, we
 show that it is useful to fully incorporate the concept of multiple
 trait-fitness optima, resulting from trait interactions in different
 habitats and growth conditions. 
description: Data from forest inventories conducted in twelve 1-ha plots
 distributed in undisturbed areas of “Restinga” (one plot), Lowland forest
 (four plots), Submontane forest (four plots), and Montane forest (three
 plots) of the Serra do Mar. All woody stems (trees, palms, and tree ferns)
 with a diameter at breast height (DBH) equal to or larger than 4.8 cm were
 tagged, taxonomically identified, and measured for diameter and
 re-censused four times over 12 years (2005 – 2016). The forest inventories
 database represents 22,770 stems from 21,509 tree individuals belonging to
 685 species from 70 botanical families. For each species, we collected
 data on six functional traits representing the leaf, seed, and wood
 economics spectra. We measured leaf area (LA, cm<sup>2</sup>),
 leaf dry matter content (LDMC, mg g-<sup> 1</sup>), and
 specific leaf area (SLA, cm<sup>2</sup> g-<sup>
 1</sup>) from ten leaves of ten individuals per species.  As a
 measure of the species’ potential size, hereafter referred to as ‘DBH’, we
 calculated the 0.95 percentile of the distribution of stem DBH for each
 species using the forest inventories dataset. Seed mass (SM, mg) and wood
 density (WD, cm<sup>3</sup> g-<sup> 1</sup>) were
 obtained from three global repositories, Global wood density database
 (Zanne et al., 2009), BIEN (Maitner et al., 2018) and TRY (Kattge et al.,
 2011), and from the literature (Bello et al., 2017; Bufalo et al., 2016;
 Chave et al., 2009; Wanderley et al., 2016). When the same species was
 present in two or more datasets, we computed the average for its trait
 values.