DOI: 10.5061/dryad.62s71
title: Data from: Resprouter fraction in Cape Restionaceae assemblages varies with climate and soil type

description: While fire-induced changes in biodiversity are well documented, less is
 known about how fire impacts life-history variation and diversity of
 functional traits that represent distinct strategies for persistence in
 fire-driven ecosystems. One example is the dichotomy in which ‘resprouter’
 species usually survive fires to produce new growth, while ‘reseeder’
 species perish and re-establish from seed. Variable relative numbers of
 reseeder and resprouter species in local assemblages of Restionaceae
 (Poales) of the Cape Floristic Region (CFR), and their high species
 richness and endemism, make this family representative of the
 region's functional, taxonomic and ecological diversity. We
 investigate how the proportion of resprouter species (resprouter fraction)
 changes among edaphic conditions and along a climate moisture (i.e.
 aridity) gradient that integrates annual precipitation (range 130–1300 mm)
 and potential evapotranspiration (range 3–8 mm m−2 day−1). We sampled
 local assemblages using a stratified-random design that fully spanned the
 environmental conditions of the CFR. As climate moisture across sites with
 infertile soils increased, so did resprouter fraction. Resprouters may
 increasingly dominate reseeders as moisture increases under conditions in
 which productivity is generally limited. This suggests the explanatory
 hypothesis that in these conditions, greater moisture accelerates both
 biomass accumulation (fuel) and fire frequency, providing an advantage to
 resprouters. However, we found no evidence for increasing resprouter
 fraction with increasing climate moisture on more fertile soils. This
 statistical interaction suggests the possibility that moisture affects
 resprouter fraction dependent on soil fertility, potentially through: (i)
 impacts on species composition, if soil type acts as an environmental
 filter or promotes biotic interactions, and/or (ii) impacts on fire
 dynamics, potentially through fuel load drying rates. Future research
 should include a comprehensive fire model for the CFR, to enable direct
 examination of relationships of life-history and functional traits across
 variation in fire dynamics. Additionally, our results indicate that we
 need both (i) demographic studies on plant establishment, growth rates and
 survival, and (ii) field experiments that address how environmental and
 biotic filters affect species composition across variable fire regimes.
 These together should facilitate mechanistic interpretation of how fire
 mediates life-history variation and diversity of functional traits in the
 CFR.
description: dataThe file
 contains the necesseary data to repeat the analyses
 presented in the article 'Resprouter fraction in Cape Restionaceae
 assemblages varies with climate and soil type'. The column
 'siteID' lists an identifier for each of the sample sites.
 Columns 'long' and 'lat' give coordinates of the sites
 in geographic coordinates (WGS84). Columns 'resprouter_def' and
 'reseeder_def' give the number of known resprouters and known
 reseeders at these sites. The reseeding/resprouting trait is not known for
 all species, we therefore give in colums 'resprouter_max' and
 'reseeder_max' the maximal possible numbers of resprouting and
 reseeding species. The column 'mbal' gives the values used as
 aridity measure, 'soiltype' indicates the soil fertility classes
 as used in the analysis. Column 'pixelID' gives an identifier of
 the pixel, used to specify the random effect in the model. The remaining
 columns indicate the names of the recorded species, where species present
 at a site are given a value of 1, species absent are given a value of
 0.