DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2vg4cg1
title: Data from: Soil types select for plants with matching nutrient‐acquisition and ‐use traits in hyperdiverse and severely nutrient‐impoverished campos rupestres and cerrado in Central Brazil

description: 1. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie the generation of
 beta-diversity remains a challenge in ecology. Underground plant
 adaptations to environmental gradients have received relatively little
 attention. 2. We studied plant nutrient-acquisition strategies and
 nutrient-use efficiency at three stages of pedogenesis in infertile soils
 from campos rupestres and on less infertile soil from cerrado sensu
 stricto in Brazil. All soils support very high plant diversity with high
 species turnover between soil types at small spatial scales (meters). We
 expected that differences in nutrient–acquisition and –use strategies
 would be associated with this high species turnover. With severely
 decreasing phosphorus (P) availability, we expected the effectiveness of
 arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbioses for plant P acquisition to decrease,
 and reliance on non-mycorrhizal strategies (NM) to increase, while
 maintaining efficient nutrient-use. 3. Concentrations of total soil P and
 nitrogen (N) were greater in soils in cerrado than in those from campos
 rupestres, and the more weathered soils from campos rupestres were
 severely P– and N–impoverished. The proportion of the root length
 colonised by AM fungi was 71% in the soils from the cerrado and campos
 rupestres. Conversely, the proportion of species with non-mycorrhizal
 P-acquisition strategies such as rhizosheaths was greater in the most
 P-impoverished soils. Leaf [P] and [N] were very low and decreased with
 decreasing soil [P] and [N]. Leaf N: P ratios suggest P-limitation of
 plant productivity in the campos rupestres but N-P co-limitation in the
 cerrado. Photosynthetic rates decreased with increasing P-impoverishment,
 but photosynthetic P-use efficiency was very high and photosynthetic N-use
 efficiency moderately high on all soils. Most species had very high
 P-remobilisation efficiency during leaf senescence (&gt;70%), but only
 moderate N-remobilisation efficiency (~50%). 4. Synthesis. We observed
 very high P-use efficiency and moderately high N-use efficiency in campos
 rupestres and cerrado species, consistent with plant productivity being
 more strongly limited by P than by N. Our findings demonstrate that
 different soil characteristics (nutrient availability and soil texture)
 select for species differing in nutrient-acquisition and -use strategies
 (especially belowground traits) which is likely key for the very high
 species turnover at a very small scale between soil types (i.e.
 beta-diversity) in campos rupestres and cerrado.
description: Abrahao_et_al_2018_Plant_data_Cipo_J_EcolPlant traits recorded for 40 species, 4 individuals per species growing on 4 different soil types in campos rupestres and cerradoAbrahao_Plant_data_Cipo_J_Ecol_Dryad.csvAbrahao_et_al_2018_Soil_data_Cipo_J_Ecol_DryadSoil attributes of 4 different soil types, 3 composite replicates per soil type in campos rupestres and cerrado vegetationAbrahao_Soil_data_Cipo_J_Ecol_Dryad.csv