DOI: 10.5061/dryad.cfxpnvx66
title: ‘Social distancing’ between plants may amplify coastal restoration at early stage

description: This dataset contains data and codes from three field experiments
 described in the paper: “Hao Huang, Chi Xu and Quan-Xing Liu. (2021)
 ‘Social distancing’ between plants may amplify coastal restoration at
 early stage, Journal of Applied Ecology, DOI:
 10.1111/1365-2664.14044”.  The experiment investigates the
 effects of a factorial combination of three factors: above-ground spatial
 configurea and below-ground connectivity with low- and
 high-elevation environmental stress. We test the two species (Scirpus and
 Spartina) on performance such as colonization, growth rate, as
 well as survival rate at one growth season.   
 Abstract for published article: "Ecological restoration is crucial to
 counteract the degradation of coastal ecosystems. Recent studies
 increasingly suggest that coastal restoration success can be amplified by
 harnessing positive interactions between individuals of foundation
 species, with clumped spatial designs as an easy-to-implement approach.
 However, positive interactions are strongly context-dependent, making it
 often difficult to tell a priori if clumped configurations would
 necessarily enhance survival and growth. Another uncertainty is that the
 relevance of below-ground spatial configuration remains unclear. Here,
 using the clonal plant species Scirpus mariqueter as the material, we
 conducted a full-factorial transplanting experiment mimicking short-term
 restoration of coastal vegetation to test for the effects of above-ground
 spatial pattern and below-ground (rhizome) connectance on restoration
 efficiency. An unexpected finding is that clumped above-ground spatial
 patterns and high below-ground rhizome connectance resulted in lower
 restoration efficiency for Scirpus, reflected by lower recolonization
 rates and vegetation cover. Such effect of spatial configuration was
 especially pronounced during the early post-transplantation stage, and was
 robust in both high and low wave-stressed conditions. Particularly, the
 recolonization rate in the clumped treatment was only about half of that
 in the random and regular treatments for Scirpus in the 4 weeks after the
 transplantation. The stark contrast between our results and previous work
 may be explained by the differences in plant traits that can substantially
 shape the net outcomes of plant-plant interactions. Our work
 highlights the necessity of considerations on biotic attributes for
 restoration designs by means of harnessing positive interactions, and
 advances the applications of facilitation theory in ecological restoration
 practices."
description: <b>Information for raw data
 files</b> “Sitexy_data.xls” includes the
 location coordination of longitude and latitude “Pattern_Connectance2019_data.xls” includes the raw data collection for full factorial experiments. Transect labels “1” and “2” indicate the high and low elevation setup. Plot numbers indicate the replication labels. Configuration describes aggregation status on the above-ground setup. And connection describes the below-ground setup on experimental treatments. “days” indicates the time and density imply the collected abundance of plants. “dat_slope_f4.xls” includes the calculated growth rate of the plant with time going from 1~4 weeks. ‘data_slope_remain.xls” includes the obtained growth rate of the plant after 5 weeks. The slope was obtained from a general linear fitted model with R package. “Expansion_data.xls” collected data for expansion area after one growing season of transplantation plots. “Scripus_spartina.xls” includes the raw comparisons data on two species Scripus and Spartina. Note that this raw data only implement on above-ground treatments for two different elevations.
description: The deposition here includes raw data here, and R codes for
 analysis of the figures available
 from https://github.com/liuqx315/Data_Code_JAppEcol .