DOI: 10.5061/dryad.8463q13
title: Data from: Plant demographic and functional responses to management intensification: a long-term study in a Mediterranean rangeland

description: 1. Understanding how functional traits, which are key for plant
 functioning, relate to demographic parameters of populations is central to
 tackle pending issues in plant ecology such as the forecast of the fate of
 populations and communities in a changing world, the quantification of
 community assembly processes or the improvement of species distribution
 models. We addressed this question in the case of species from a
 Mediterranean rangeland of southern France. 2. Changes in species
 abundance in response to management intensification (fertilization and
 increased grazing pressure) were followed over a 28-year period.
 Probabilities of presence, and elasticities of the changes in the
 probability of space occupancy to colonization and survival, which are
 analogues of demographic parameters, were calculated for 53 species from
 the time series of abundance data using a space occupancy model. Nine
 quantitative traits pertaining to resource use, plant morphology,
 regeneration and phenology were measured on these species and related to
 demographic parameters. 3. The long-term dynamics of species in response
 to management intensification was associated with major changes in
 functional traits and strategies. Changes in the probability of occurrence
 – analogous to population growth rate - were correlated with traits
 describing the fast-slow continuum of leaf functioning. The elasticity of
 population growth rate to colonization was significantly related to
 reproductive plant height and seed mass, and to a lower extent, to leaf
 carbon isotopic ratio. 4. Synthesis. The functional response of species to
 management intensification corresponds to a shift along the second axis of
 a recently identified global spectrum of plant form and function, which
 maps, to some extent, onto the fast-slow continuum of life-history
 strategies. By contrast, the elasticity of colonization relates to the
 global spectrum axis capturing the size of organs. Seed mass contributes
 to this axis and is assumed to relate to one of the important traits
 structuring the reproductive strategy axis of life histories as well,
 namely net reproductive rate. While this mapping between functional and
 life-history traits is appealing, further tests in contrasting types of
 communities are required to assess its degree of generality.
description: Data used in paper
 Journal of Ecology-2017-0709.R2Data collected in the
 field in southern France, at the La Fage experimental station (43°55N,
 3°06E, 765-830 m a.s.l.). Analogues of demographic parameters are derived
 from changes in species abundance data in paddocks with intensified regime
 (increased fertilization and grazing pressure) over the 1978-2005 period,
 following Damgaard et al. (2011; Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2:
 110-115). Plant traits were measured in 2006 and 2007. Column headings
 are: Species name (SpeciesName, following TaxRef, version 10); Botanical
 Family (BotanicalFamily); Life Cyle (LifeCycle); Raunkiaer life form
 (LifeForm); Population Growth Rate (PopGrowthRate, unitless); Elasticity
 of population growth rate to survival (Elast_s, unitless) and colonization
 (Elast_c, unitless); Reproductive Plant Height (RPH, in cm); Seed Mass
 (SeedMass, in mg); Onset of Flowering (OFL, in day of year); Area of an
 individual leaf (LeafArea, in cm2); Specific Leaf Area (SLA, in m2/kg);
 Leaf Dry Matter Content (LDMC, in mg/g); Mass-based Leaf Nitrogen Content
 (LNC, in mg/g); Mass-based Leaf Phosphorus Content (LPC, in mg/g); Leaf
 carbon isotopic fraction (LDelta13C, in ‰)Data_JEcol-2017-0709.R2.csv