DOI: 10.5061/dryad.h9w0vt4m8
title: The adaptive capacity of alien and endangered plants in China

description: The datasets used in the article includes
 of “Endangered plants.csv” and “Alien
 plants.csv”. The dataset of “Endangered
 plants” contains data from the list of the National Key Protected
 Wild Plants (the first and second batches) officially approved by the
 State Council, 1898 plants were recorded in the information system of the
 Chinese Rare and Endangered Plants. The dataset
 of “Alien plants” contains data from The Checklist of
 the Chinese Invasive Plants and
 562 alien plants were recorded.
 Diaspore morphological traits were collected
 from database of the Flora of
 China (http://www.iplant.cn/foc/). Diaspore Information
 Database from Royal
 Botanic Gardens (http://data.kew.org/sid/), and the
 PLANTS Database of the United
 States (https://plants.usda.gov/java/). Each dataset includes 29
 columns: ID, Species, Family, Dispersal strategy, The
 number of dispersal strategies of a plant, Reproductive mode, The number
 of reproductive modes of a plant, Life form, Habitat type, The number of
 habitats of a plant, Distribution scale, Score 1-16, Adaptive capacity to
 stressful environments, and Adaptive capacity to disturbed environments.
 Dispersal strategy includes: autochory (barochory, ballistic
 dispersal, and blastochory); anemochory (macrogeochory, meteor-anemochory,
 trichometeorochory, and pterometeorochory); hydrochory (bythisochory,
 zoohydrochory, and nautohydrochory); zoochory (endozoochory, epizoochory,
 frugivory, graminivory, granivory, and myrmecochory); and anthropochory
 (agochory, ethelochory, speirochory, and anthropochory). The number of
 dispersal strategies of a plant includes: one or two modes, three modes,
 four modes, and more than four modes. The reproductive mode includes: 1)
 spores or seeds; 2) ramets; 3)
 cutting, layering, or grafting; 4) rhizome; and
 5) budding. The number of reproductive modes of a plant includes: one
 mode, two modes, three modes, and more than three modes. Life
 form includes: annual and biennial, perennial,
 vine, shrub, and arbor. Habitat type includes: 1)
 deserts or desert steppes; 2) steppes or dry hillsides;
 3) waysides, near villages or wastelands; 4) farm lands;
 5) meadow steppes or grasslands; 6) exposed rocks and crevices or
 tree tops; 7) forest edges, shrublands, or jungles; 8) rivers, lake banks,
 or benches; 9) marshes, wet meadows, or paddy fields and 10) in
 water. The number of plant habitats includes: one type,
 two types, three types, and more than three types. Distribution scale
 county scale (&lt; 5 × 104 km2), municipal scale
 (5–35 × 104 km2), provincial scale or autonomous
 regions (35–150 × 104 km2), and national
 scale (&gt;150 × 104 km2). Score 1-16 are
 scores of in corresponding indicator assessed in stressful and disturbed
 environment, respectively. Adaptive capacity to stressful and disturbed
 environments are total scores of plants assessed to
 stressful and disturbed environments.
description: In the study, we collected plant information, including dispersal
 strategy, the number of dispersal strategies of a plant, distribution
 scale, life form, habitat type, the number of habitats of a plant,
 reproductive mode, and the number of reproductive modes of a plant to
 assess the adaptive capacity of alien and endangered plants in disturbed
 and stressful environments in China using the analytic hierarchy process
 (AHP). Our aim was to answer why the habitat area of alien plants tends
 to expand continually whereas that of endangered plants maintains
 or shrinks.
description: The readme file contains an
 explanation of each of the variables in the datasets and
 their units. Information on how the
 measurements were done can be found in the associated manuscript
 referenced above.