DOI: 10.5061/dryad.vx0k6dk2f
title: Data from: Emergence of a resource acquisition tradeoff at the community scale during environmental change

description: Biomass-weighted mean traits of a community’s constituent species are a
 useful tool to assess environmental filtering in community function in
 response to environmental change. We show that annually averaged
 phytoplankton community function, expressed by the community mean traits
 phosphate and light affinity, responded strongly and reversibly to
 long-term changes in nutrient supply over a 42-year period of
 eutrophication and re-oligotrophication of Lake Constance. Within the
 lake’s species pool, phosphate and light affinities were weakly negatively
 correlated, suggesting a weak physiological tradeoff. Yet, a strong
 tradeoff between these traits emerged when species were weighted by their
 biomass, suggesting species sorting along the tradeoff line across years
 of shifting nutrient status. Emergent tradeoffs, i.e. tradeoffs that
 become apparent first when trait combinations are weighted by the
 contributions of the trait-bearing organisms to community biomass, may be
 a useful, novel concept in trait-based ecology of potentially similar
 importance as commonly considered physiological tradeoffs.
description: # Emergence of a resource acquisition tradeoff at the community scale
 during environmental change Emergence of a resource acquisition tradeoff
 at the community scale during environmental change: By Anton Pranger,
 Frank Peeters, Nathalie Wagner, Sebastian Diehl, and Dietmar Straile. To
 be published in Ecology Letters (expected in 2025) **Description of the
 data and file structure** Phytoplankton and phosphorus data were provided
 by the IGKB (Internationale Gewässerschutzkommission für den Bodensee, EN:
 International Water Protection Committee for Lake Constance). This
 repository contains annual mean data derived from raw data. Namely: *
 Annual mean relative biovolume of taxa found in Lake Constance
 (annual_mean_relative_biovolume.txt) * Columns are years, rows are classes
 (unitless) * Annual mean biovolume (annual_mean_biovolume.txt) * Vector of
 annual mean biovolume (μL L^-1) * Total phosphorus concentration during
 winter mixis (TPmix.txt) * Vector of total phosphorus concentration during
 winter mixis (μmol L^-1) The IGKB can be contacted
 ([https://www.igkb.org/kontakt](https://www.igkb.org/kontakt)) for
 requests to provide raw data from their Bodensee-Wasser-Informationssystem
 (BOWIS,
 [https://www.igkb.org/daten-und-karten](https://www.igkb.org/daten-und-karten)). The data submitted here are secondary derived and compatible with the CC0 waiver. The IGKB and BOWIS must always be acknowledged when annual mean data from this repository are used. This helps the IGKB justify the costs for their ongoing monitoring program. Additional data contained in this repository are: * taxonomy of phytoplankton taxa in Lake Constance and in trait data sets obtained from [https://www.algaebase.org](https://www.algaebase.org) (taxonomy.txt) * Columns are taxonomic levels (species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, empire) * Rows are taxa * estimated traits for taxa in Lake Constance (traits.txt) * Columns are species name, phosphate affinity, light affinity and maximum growth rate * a_p denotes phosphate affinity (L μmol^-1 d^-1) * a_i denotes light affinity (10^-7 μmol quanta^-1 m^2) * mu_p denotes maximum growth rate (d^-1) * all traits are (natural) log-transformed Trait data were obtained from: 1. Bruggeman, J. (2011). A phylogenetic approach to the estimation of phytoplankton traits. Appendix S1: Source data. Journal of Phycology, 47(1), 52–65. [https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1529-8817.2010.00946.x](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1529-8817.2010.00946.x) 2. Edwards, K. F., Litchman, E., & Klausmeier, C. A. (2013). Functional traits explain phytoplankton responses to environmental gradients across lakes of the United States. Ecology, 94(7), 1626–1635. [https://doi.org/10.1890/12-1459.1](https://doi.org/10.1890/12-1459.1) 3. Schwaderer, A. S., Yoshiyama, K., de Tezanos Pinto, P., Swenson, N. G., Klausmeier, C. A., & Litchman, E. (2011). Eco-evolutionary differences in light utilization traits and distributions of freshwater phytoplankton. Limnology and Oceanography, 56(2), 589–598. [https://doi.org/10.4319/lo.2011.56.2.0589](https://doi.org/10.4319/lo.2011.56.2.0589) #### **Code** All analyses and data visualizations were done in R (version 4.4.2). The following packages were used in the analyses and plotting: * 'prais' (version 1.1.3) for prais-winsten regression * 'viridis' (version 0.6.5) for color coding (time color scheme is 'cividis') * 'paletteer' (version 1.6.0) for color coding (class color coding is 'Plasma') * 'shape' (version 1.4.6.1) for arrowheads in Fig. 2. All code was bug-free using most recent versions of R and packages downloaded on 17-12-2024. Running the script main.R will run all analysis and all data visualizations functions.R contain custom functions for: * deriving annual mean data from raw Lake Constance data (functions_V2.R) - calculation of community mean traits - calculation of class mean traits - aggregating by taxonomic level - permutation tests (community mean traits versus environment and community mean traits versus community mean traits) - standardized major axis fitting - plotting and displaying statistics in figures Functions are loaded into the environment using source() in main.R Code for running each figure is stored in a separate script called figure_X.R. These scripts are executed using source() in main.R. Figure scripts rely on custom plot functions in functions.R.