DOI: 10.5061/dryad.n5tb2rbx9
title: Plant community impact on productivity: trait diversity or key(stone) species effects?

description: Outside controlled experimental plots, the impact of community attributes
 on primary productivity has rarely been compared to that of individual
 species. Here, we identified plant species of high importance for
 productivity (key species) in &gt;29,000 diverse grassland communities
 in the European Alps, and compared their effects with those of
 community-level measures of functional composition (weighted means,
 variances, skewness, and kurtosis). After accounting for the environment,
 the five most important key species jointly explained more deviance of
 productivity than any measure of functional composition alone. Key species
 were generally tall with high specific leaf areas. By dividing the
 observations according to distinct habitats, the explanatory power of key
 species and functional composition increased and key-species plant types
 and functional composition-productivity relationships varied
 systematically, presumably because of changing interactions and trade-offs
 between traits. Our results advocate for a careful consideration of
 species’ individual effects on ecosystem functioning in complement to
 community-level measures.
description: These are the data supporting the results of the Ecology Letters
 paper "Plant community impact on productivity: trait diversity or
 key(stone) species effects?", after data preparation.
description: <strong>Description of data
 included</strong>
 Site_by_species.csv: Table containing
 semi-quantitative abundance observations of grassland species
 (Braun-Blanquet scheme). Column "ID" refers to site ID's.
 The remaining columns are Taxon names.
 Site_by_environment.csv: Table containing
 information on environmental conditions at observed sites.
 "ID": Site ID<br> "lon": Decimal
 longitude<br> "lat": Decimal latitude<br>
 "savi_mean_allyear": annual mean SAVI<br>
 "savi_nobs_allyear": number of SAVI observations available to
 calculate annual mean<br> "temp100_mean": annual mean
 temperature<br> "aridiff": annual mean humidity (potential
 evapotranspiration - precipitation)<br> "Soil_ind.F_rdf":
 soil moisture index (derived from plant indiciator values)<br>
 "Soil_ind.N_rdf": soil fertility index (derived from plant
 indiciator values)<br> "Land_cover": land cover class
 (CORINE product, see paper)<br> "Exposition": in
 degrees<br> "TWI": terrain wettness index<br>
 "clusters5_3d": habitat number, when distinguishing five
 habitats<br> "clusters25_3d": habitat number, when
 distinguishing 25 habitats<br> "clusters50_3d": habitat
 number, when distinghishing 50 habitats
 Site_by_cwx.csv: Table containing estimates of
 community-weighted moments, for sites with sufficient trait data
 coverage. Column "ID" refers to site ID's.
 Species_by_trait.csv: Taible containing
 estimates of traits for taxa with &gt;1% overall occurence
 frequency. "Taxon": taxon name<br>
 "LNC": leaf nitrogen content<br> "PL_H_fl":
 flowering height (in cm)<br> "SLA": specific leaf
 area <strong>General
 comments</strong> The
 tables Site_by_environment.csv and Species_by_trait.csv contain missing
 values which are indicated with 'n/a'.
 <strong>Further information</strong>
 For more information, please consider the 2022 Ecology Letters
 paper "Plant community impact on productivity: trait diversity or
 key(stone) species effects?" by Brun et al.