Intraindividual variability as a large source of trait variation in tundra clonal shrubs along elevation and latitude gradients
Data files
Oct 09, 2025 version files 845.94 KB
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code_R_Anadon-Rosell_etal_2025_GEB.R
771.96 KB
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Data_CLUNDRA_2025.zip
68.50 KB
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README.md
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Abstract
Aim: Intraindividual trait variability (iITV), which is the variability among repeated architectural units within an individual, may represent a crucial dimension of functional diversity in plant eco-evolutionary dynamics. Although inter- and intraspecific trait variability have been widely studied, the extent of iITV remains largely overlooked. Since iITV might be especially relevant in long-lived clonal plants, we investigated sources of trait variability (species, site, clone, ramet, leaf) in tundra clonal dwarf shrubs, particularly focusing on iITV and its potential drivers.
Location: Europe
Time period: July 2019 to September 2020
Major taxa studied: Clonal dwarf shrubs
Methods: We sampled four widespread boreo-alpine clonal dwarf shrub species (Dryas octopetala, Empetrum hermaphroditum, Vaccinium myrtillus and Vaccinium uliginosum) along elevation gradients in the Pyrenees, and along a latitude gradient in Europe. At each site, we selected four clones per species and sampled five ramets per clone. We measured size-architectural traits in each ramet and leaf traits in five leaves per ramet. We quantified interspecific, intraspecific and iITV, investigated the relationship between iITV and both climate and clone structural variables, and compared sampling protocols either accounting for or ignoring iITV.
Results: Although interspecific trait variability was substantial, we found large proportions of iITV within species. Size-architectural traits showed larger iITV (up to 100% of ITV), but leaf traits also showed remarkable values (up to 77%). Our results showed that iITV increased with mean annual temperature for specific leaf area. However, climate and clone structural variables were not predictive for iITV for any other trait.
Conclusions: Our quantification of iITV in clonal dwarf shrubs evidences the importance of this source of variability and its potential ecological implications and emphasises the need to integrate it in sampling protocols, both to avoid bias in comparative studies and improve the predictive capacity of trait-based approaches in population and community ecology.
This dataset was created within the project CLUNDRA and was used in the analyses for the accompanying manuscript "Intraindividual variability as a large source of trait variation in clonal tundra shrubs along elevation and latitude gradients".
It includes the code for the analysis in R, and several files with all necessary data.
Description of the data and file structure
The compressed folder Data_CLUNDRA_2025.zip includes all data in separate files. Following, a short description of each file and the metadata.
File: data_CLUNDRA.txt
Short description: file with trait values. Missing data are coded as NA.
Header: Description
- Shrub.ID: Code for the ramet
- Clone.ID: Code for the clone
- Site: Study site along the latitude gradient
- Species: Study species
- Elevation: Elevation position within the elevation gradient
- Population: Code for population, including information about elevation and latitude gradient
- Clone: Clone number
- Ramet: Ramet number
- Leaf: Leaf number
- Height Ramet length (as a proxy for height, cm)
- Cross-section: Area of the cross-section at the ramet stem base (um2)
- Freshweight: Fresh weight (g)
- Dryweight: Dry weight (g)
- Leafarea: Leaf area (mm2)
- Leafarea.corr: Leaf area, units corrected for Empetrum hermaphroditum (mm2)
- SLA: Specific leaf area (mm2/mg)
- LDMC: Leaf dry matter content (mg/g)
- Uncorr_LeafBiomass: Leaf biomass (g) - not corrected for the missing leaves used for SLA and LDMC
- LeafBiomass: Leaf biomass (g) corrected for the missing leaves used for SLA and LDMC
- Hv: Huber value (cm2/m2)
File: data_climate.txt
Short description: file with climate data
Header: Description
- Site: Study site along the latitude gradient
- Species: Study species
- Elevation: Elevation position within the elevation gradient. Hyphen indicates that there was not an elevation gradient sampled at that site.
- Coordinate.long: Coordinate for longitude (decimal)
- Coordinate.lat: Coordinate for latitude (decimal)
- MAT: Mean annual temperature (°C)
- TAP: Total annual precipitation (mm)
- Temperature JJA: Mean annual temperature for summer months (June, July, August, °C)
- Temperature DJF: Mean annual temperature for winter months (December, January, February, °C)
- Precipitation JJA: Annual precipitation for summer months (June, July, August, mm)
- Precipitation DJF: Annual precipitation for winter months (December, January, February, mm)
File: data_clone_height.txt
Short description: file with data for clone height. Missing data are coded as NA.
Header: Description
- Site: Study site: along the latitude gradient
- Species: Study species
- Elevation: Elevation position within the elevation gradient
- Clone: Clone number
- Clone.height: Height of the clone resulting of the average of height measured at 5 random positions along the clone (cm)
File: data_distances.txt
Short description: file including data for the spatial distance analysis. Missing data are coded as NA.
Header: Description
- Clone.ID: Code for the clone
- Site: Study site along the latitude gradient
- Species: Study species
- Elevation: Elevation position within the elevation gradient
- Population: Code for population, including information about elevation and latitude gradient
- Clone: Clone number
- DistanceRamet: Ramets selected for the distance calculation
- Point1: First ramet used for the distance calculation
- Point2: Second ramet used for the distance calculation
- SpatialDistance: Number of branching nodes between the two selected ramets
- Dist.SLA: Dissimilarity in SLA (difference) between the two selected ramets (mm2/mg)
- Dist.LDMC: Dissimilarity in LDMC (difference) between the two selected ramets (mg/g)
- Dist.LA: Dissimilarity in leaf area (difference) between the two selected ramets (mm2)
File: data_sampling_strategies.txt
Short description: file including data for the analysis on alternative sampling strategies and their root-mean-square errors
Header: Description
- Trait.mean: Population mean value for the trait
- RMSE: Root-mean-square error for the trait
- Site: Site code including information about elevation and latitude gradient (named as "Population" in the other datasets)
- Species: Study species
- Trait: Trait
- Strategy.r: Sampling strategy (results2, results3, results4, results5), coded as "resultx"
- Strategy: Sampling strategy (LC, RC, C-LR, C): LC = sampling strategy maximising leaves and clones; RC = sampling strategy maximising ramets and clones; C-LR = intermediate sampling strategy for leaves and ramets maximising clones; C = sampling strategy maximising clones.
- Normalised.RMSE: Normalised root-mean-square error
File: CLUNDRA_means.txt
Short description: file with our study species trait means
Header: Description
- AccSpeciesName: Species name
- LA: Leaf area (mm2)
- SLA: Specific leaf area (mm2/mg)
- LDMC: Leaf dry matter content (g/g)
- Height: Plant height (m)
- Dataset: Name given to our own data (CLUNDRAmeans) for the trait space figure
- Dataset2: Name given to our own data separating shrub species (CLUNDRAmeansDO, CLUNDRAmeansEH, CLUNDRAmeansVM, CLUNDRAmeansVU) for the trait space figure
Code/Software
The file code_R_Anadon-Rosell_etal_2025_GEB.R includes all the coding for this dataset.
- Anadon‐Rosell, Alba; Casanovas, Amanda; Bog, Manuela et al. (2025). Intraindividual Variability as a Large Source of Trait Variation in Clonal Tundra Dwarf Shrubs Along Elevation and Latitude Gradients. Global Ecology and Biogeography. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.70134