DOI: 10.5061/dryad.9s4mw6mm3
title: Data and code from: The functional trait distinctiveness of plant species is scale dependent

description: Beyond the local abundance of species, their functional trait
 distinctiveness is now recognized as a key driver of community dynamics
 and ecosystem functioning. Yet, since the functional distinctiveness of a
 species is always relative to a given species pool, a species distinct at
 the regional scale might not necessarily be distinct at the local or
 community scale, and reciprocally. To assess the importance of scale (i.e
 the definition of a species pool) when quantifying the functional
 distinctiveness of species, and how it might distort the ecological
 conclusions derived from it, we quantified trait distinctiveness of 1,350
 plant species at regional, local, and community scales over ca. 88 000
 grassland plots in France. We measured differences in functional
 distinctiveness of species between regional, local and community scales
 and tested the influence of environmental predictors (climate and nitrogen
 input) and contexts (environmental distinctiveness, frequency, and
 heterogeneity) on these variations. In line with theoretical expectations,
 we found large variations of functional distinctiveness (in particular
 between regional and community scales) for many species, with a general
 tendency of lower distinctiveness at smaller scales. We also showed that
 nitrogen input – a key aspect of high land use intensity – and
 environmental frequency partly explained the differences between local and
 regional scales only. These results suggest the role played by
 environmental filtering on species' distinctiveness at the local
 scale, but the determinant of distinctiveness variations at the community
 scale still needs to be elucidated. Our study provides robust empirical
 evidence that measures of ecological originality are strongly
 scale-dependent. We urge ecologists to carefully consider the scale at
 which they measure distinctiveness, as ignoring scale dependencies could
 lead to biased (or even entirely wrong) conclusions when not considered at
 the scale of interest for the respective research question.
description: Please see the README document and the accompanying published
 article: Gaüzère et al., 2022. The functional trait distinctiveness of
 plant species is scale dependent. Ecography.
 <strong>For details on the SIFLORE data</strong>,
 please refer to :   Just, A. et al. 2015. SIFlore, a
 dataset of geographical distribution of vascular plants covering five
 centuries of knowledge in France: Results of a collaborative project
 coordinated by the Federation of the National Botanical Conservatories. -
 PhytoKeys: 47–60. Data can be found at http://siflore.fcbn.fr  <strong>For details on the DIVGRASS data</strong>, please refer to : Violle, C. et al. 2015. Vegetation ecology meets ecosystem science: Permanent grasslands as a functional biogeography case study. - Sci. Total Environ. 534: 43–51. Unfortunately, divgrass data are not openly accessible but can be accessed upon request at Cyrille.VIOLLE@cefe.cnrs.fr All the data needed to reproduce the results are provided in this repository. 
description: All the analyses were run in R, using several packages listed in
 each scripts. See the README document for more
 details.