Functional trait and survival data for seed and seedling transplant experiments of alpine Nabalus spp. at Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, NY, USA, July through September 2017

These datasets contain survival, seed establishment, and functional trait data for seeds and seedlings of the plants Nabalus boottii (Syn: Prenanthes boottii), Nabalus trifoliolatus var. nanus, and non-alpine Nabalus trifoliolatus. Seeds and seedlings from low and high elevation were transplanted at low, mid, and high elevation on Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, New York, and grown for two months, the approximate length of the alpine growing season. Using these data, we assessed the fitness (i.e. survival) effects of an imposed change in climate on seeds and seedlings. We also compared plasticity across traits and across taxa. The purpose was to inform our understanding of the climate change vulnerability of the focal Nabalus species, one of which is of high conservation concern as a narrow endemic species, and to investigate the applicability of the niche breadth-range size hypothesis to explain range size differences in Nabalus spp. Methods and specifics for each dataset are described in the "Metadata_datafiles" file (provided in MS Word and PDF formats). Original whole-plant scanned images are provided, from which several functional trait measurements were obtained using ImageJ.