DOI: 10.5061/dryad.fj6q5741c
title: Global leaf sulphur stoichiometry and the relationships with nitrogen and phosphorus: phylogeny, growth form and environmental controls

description: Sulphur (S) is an essential bioelement with vital roles in serving
 regulatory and catalytic functions, and tightly coupled with N and P in
 plants. However, globally stoichiometric patterns of leaf S and its
 relationships to leaf N and P are less well studied. We compiled 31,939
 records of leaf-based data for 2,600 plant species across 6,652 sites
 worldwide. All plant species were divided into different phylogenetic taxa
 and growth forms. Standard major axis analysis was employed to fit the
 bivariate element relationships. A phylogenetic linear mixed effect model
 and a multiple regression model were used to partition the variations of
 bioelements into phylogeny and environments, and then to estimate the
 importance of environmental variables. Global geometric mean leaf S, N and
 P concentrations were 1.44, 15.70 and 1.27 mg g-1, with significant
 differences among plant groups. Leaf S-N-P positively correlated to each
 other, ignoring plant groups. The scaling exponents of LN-LS, LP-LS and
 LN-LP were 0.64, 0.76 and 0.79 for all species, but differed among plant
 groups. Both phylogeny and environments regulated the bioelements. The
 variability, rather than mean temperature controlled the bioelements.
 Phylogeny explained more for the concentrations of all the three
 bioelements than environments, of which S was the one most affected by
 phylogenetic taxa.
description: # Global leaf sulphur stoichiometry and the relationships with nitrogen
 and phosphorus: phylogeny, growth form and environmental controls In
 total, we collected 31939 records of data , and 2600 plant species
 belonging to 1186 genera, 210 families, 69 orders, 7 classes and 4
 divisions. The overall plants were divided into two growth forms: woody
 and herb, five growth forms within woody plants: conifer tree, deciduous
 broad-leaf tree (DB), evergreen broad-leaf tree (EB), deciduous (D) shrub
 and evergreen (E) shrub. Herbs were subdivided into aquatic and
 terrestrial herbs by habitats, and into graminoids and forbs by leaf
 types. The collected environment variables (MAT, MAP, BIO2, BIO5, BIO6,
 BIO13, BIO14 and BIO15) were used to analyze the response of the leaf
 elements (leaf S, leaf N and leaf P) to them. ## Description of the Data
 and file structure We have thirteen sheets in this dataset file. Sheet 1,
 named "Overall_data", we have a 31940*36 matrix. Sheet 2, named
 "Metadata" contains a detailed description of the abbreviations
 that appear in the dataset. Sheet 3, we recorded the source of the
 dataset. Sheet 4, named "Fig5_data", contains SiteID, OrderID,
 FamilyID, SpeciesID and elemental concentrations (i.e., CON). All data in
 "Fig5_data" is derived from "Overall_data" (After
 remove all null values for each column). Sheet 5 contains the variance of
 each component (Site, Species, Family, Order and Residual, %) to leaf S, N
 and P at different levels. Sheet 6, named "Fig6_data", contains
 environmental variables (BIO15, BIO14, BIO13, BIO6, BIO5, BIO2, MAT and
 MAP ) and element variables (leaf S, N and P) at different levels.
 "Fig6_data" is obtained by extracting from
 "Overall_data" and then deleting the null value. Sheet 7, Sheet
 8 and Sheet 9 named "pearson", "lm_result" and
 "env_importance" respectively, are all results obtained in the
 course of calculating. Sheet 10, named "BIO", contains 19
 environment variables (BIO1-BIO19) obtained from the WorldClim
 ([https://worldclim.org/).](https://worldclim.org/\).) Sheet 11, Sheet 12
 and Sheet 13 named "LeafS_species", "LeafN_species"
 and "LeafP_species" respectively, includes value of all S, N and
 P in the database and family information on the corresponding species,
 respectively. Since some samples did not have exact species information,
 their taxonomic information was incomplete and we filled by
 "NA". Some samples did not provide latitude and longitude
 information on the raw data, and we filled in with "NA". On
 samples that lacked latitude and longitude, environmental information
 could not be obtained based on latitude and longitude, and this part of
 the environmental data were filled with "NA". **The
 abbreviations for variables**: Variable Description AQ Aquatic plant C
 Conifer tree DS Deciduous shrub DB Deciduous broad-leaf tree EB Evergreen
 broad-leaf tree shrub Evergreen shrub TH Terrestrial herb MAT Mean average
 temperature (°C) MAP Mean average precipitation (mm) BIO2 Mean diurnal
 range (°C) BIO5 Max temperature of warmest month (°C) BIO6 Min temperature
 of coldest month (°C) BIO13 Precipitation of wettest month (mm) BIO14
 Precipitation of driest month (mm) BIO15 Precipitation seasonality
 (coefficient of variation) (mm) Leaf S Total sulphur concentrations in
 leaves (mg g-1) Leaf N Total nitrogen concentrations in leaves (mg g-1)
 Leaf P Total phosphorus concentrations in leaves (mg g-1) NS Ratio of leaf
 sulfur concentrations to leaf nitrogen concentrations PS Ratio of leaf
 phosphorus concentrations to leaf sulfur concentrations NP Ratio of leaf
 nitrogen concentrations to leaf phosphorus concentrations ##
 Sharing/Access information Links to other publicly accessible locations of
 the data: N/A Was data derived from another source? Yes Data was derived
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