DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2jm63xss9
title: Area, connectivity and plant life strategy diversity and abundance in temporary ponds of Southeastern Carpathians (Romania, Europe)

description: We used this dataset to determine whether area and connectivity of
 temporary ponds can predict plant species diversity, and the diversity and
 abundance of different plant life histories within the ponds. The studied
 system is located in the Ciuc Basin of the Southeastern Carpathian
 Mountains, Romania.  We collected data on the macrophyte
 species diversity of 28 temporary ponds between 2006-2009. Plant species
 identified in the ponds were assigned into one of the social behaviour
 types proposed by Borhidi (1995), which describe plant-habitat
 interactions within a framework extended from Grime’s evolutionary life
 strategies (Grime 1988), as follows: competitors, stress tolerants
 (generalists or specialists) and ruderals (natural pioneers i.e., plants
 of habitats disturbed by natural factors, and plants of habitats disturbed
 by human factors, classified as either: disturbance tolerants, native
 weeds, naturalised crops, adventitious weeds, ruderal competitors, alien
 competitors). We expressed species diversity as observed species richness
 (total number of species) and Shannon diversity index, and abundance as
 cumulative vegetation cover, calculated for each pond and for each social
 behaviour type separately. We calculated pond area using the
 short and long axis of the ellipse that best approximated the pond shape.
 Pond connectivity with the Olt river was defined as the pond present and
 respectively past (preceding river regulation) geographic distance from
 the Olt river, measured between the pond GPS coordinate and the nearest
 point of the river.
description: <strong>Description of methods used for
 collection/generation of data</strong>:  We
 collected data on the macrophyte species diversity of 28 temporary ponds
 in the Ciuc Basin (Romania, Southeastern Carpathians, Europe) using a
 stratified sampling. Each plant community identified in a pond was
 recorded with one phytosociological relevé in a 25 m² plot placed randomly
 within that community. Vascular species were identified at the species
 level and mosses at the genus level, and assigned to six cover classes by
 visual estimation (Braun-Blanquet, 1964). Plant communities were
 identified following (Coldea 1991, Sanda et al. 2008). A short report on
 the plant communities identified is available in Csergő and Demeter
 (2011). We recorded the geographic coordinates of each
 pond in the WGS84 Coordinate Reference System using a GPS device. We
 calculated pond area using the short and long axis of the ellipse that
 best approximated the pond shape. We defined pond connectivity with the
 Olt river as the pond present and respectively past geographic distance
 from the Olt river, measured between the pond GPS coordinate and the
 nearest point of the river. For obtaining the past distance we used the
 digitised map of the Second Military Survey of the Habsburg Empire
 (1853-1858 and 1869-1870) accessed from https://www.arcanum.com (Timár et
 al. 2010). All geo-spatial operations were performed using QGIS Desktop
 3.16.6. with GRASS 7.8.5 software.
 <strong>References</strong>:
 Csergő, A. M., & Demeter, L. (2011). The Conservation
 Value of Temporary Ponds in the Ciuc Basin (Transylvania, Romania) from a
 Vegetation Perspective. In B. Knowles (Ed.), Mountain hay meadows:
 hotspots of biodiversity and traditional culture. Retrieved from
 http://www.mountainhaymeadows.eu/online_publication/index.html
 Braun-Blanquet, J. (1964). Pflanzensoziologie, Grundzüge der
 Vegetationskunde (3rd ed., Vol. 631). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
 Coldea, G. (1991). Prodrome des associations Vegetales des
 Carpates du Sud-Est (Carpates Roumanies). Documents Phytosociologiques,
 N.S. 13, 1–540. Sanda, V., Öllerer, K., &
 Burescu, P. (2008). Fitocenozele din România. Sintaxonomie, structură,
 dinamică şi evoluţie. Ed. Ars Docendi, București. 537 pp.
 Timár, G., Biszak, S., Székely, B., & Molnár, G. (2010).
 Digitized Maps of the Habsburg Military Surveys – Overview of the Project
 of ARCANUM Ltd. (Hungary). In M. Jobst (Ed.), Preservation in Digital
 Cartography. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography (pp.
 273–283). Berlin: Springer.  
 <strong>Methods for processing the
 data</strong>:  In each phytosociological relevé
 we converted the six cover classes into percentages as follows: 0.5%, 5%,
 17.5%, 37.5%, 62.5%, and 87.5%.  We grouped the
 recorded species into one of the social behaviour types proposed by
 Borhidi (1995), which describe plant-habitat interactions within a
 framework extended from Grime’s evolutionary life strategies (Grime 1988),
 as follows: competitors, stress tolerants (generalists or specialists) and
 ruderals (natural pioneers i.e., plants of habitats disturbed by natural
 factors, and plants of habitats disturbed by human factors, classified as
 either: disturbance tolerants, native weeds, naturalised crops,
 adventitious weeds, ruderal competitors, alien competitors). To quantify
 plant diversity and abundance at the pond- level and for each social
 behaviour type within a pond, we first calculated a pond-level pooled
 species dataset, selecting the average cover value observed for each
 species across all plots within a pond. Using the pooled dataset, we
 expressed species diversity as observed species richness (total number of
 species) and Shannon diversity index. We expressed abundance as cumulative
 vegetation cover, calculated for each pond and for each social behaviour
 type separately. To make the abundance values of different social
 behaviour types comparable, we divided the cumulative cover of each social
 behaviour type within a pond by the total vegetation cover obtained for
 the respective pond. The diversity metrics were calculated using the vegan
 package in R (Oksanen et al. 2013).
 <strong>References</strong>:
 Borhidi, A. (1995). Social Behaviour Types of the Hungarian
 Flora, its Naturalness and Relative Ecological Indicator Values. Acta
 Botanica Hungarica, 39(January 1995), 97–181. Grime, J.
 P. (1988). The C-S-R model of primary plant strategies — origins,
 implications and tests. In L. D. Gottlieb & S. K. Jain (Eds.),
 Plant Evolutionary Biology (pp. 371–393). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1207-6_14 Oksanen, J., Blanchet, F. G., Kindt, R., Legendre, P., Minchin, P. R., O’Hara, R. B., … Wagner, H. (2013). Vegan: Community Ecology Package.
description: The spreadsheets can be opened in versions of Excel and R.