Leaf area predicts conspecific spatial aggregation of woody species

Aim: Addressing how woody plant species are distributed in space can reveal inconspicuous drivers that structure plant communities. The spatial structure of conspecifics varies not only at local scales across co-existing plant species but also at larger biogeographical scales with climatic parameters and habitat properties. The possibility that biogeographical drivers shape the spatial structure of plants, however, has not received sufficient attention.
Location: Global synthesis.
Time period: 1997 - 2022.
Major taxa studied: Woody angiosperms and conifers.
Methods: We carried out a quantitative synthesis to capture the interplay between local scale and larger scale drivers. We modelled conspecific spatial aggregation as a binary response through logistic models and Ripley’s L statistics and the distance at which the point process was least random with mixed effects linear models. Our predictors covered a range of plant traits, climatic predictors and descriptors of the habitat.
Results..., On the 8th of September 2022 we carried out a search in the Web of Science with the search string “(Ripley's K function) AND (forest)”. The search yielded 356 hits. We screened those 356 studies for eligibility, first based on the suitability of their article titles and second based on their abstracts (Figure S1). The 240 eligible studies were subsequently screened manually upon reading the entire article based on the following inclusion criteria:
(1)           The study reported on univariate Ripley's K or L statistics or else it was possible to extract those from figures or maps.
(2)           The study had been carried out in a woody ecosystem or a rangeland.
(3)           The univariate Ripley’s K statistics described the distribution of individuals from a single plant species.
(4)           The authors named the plant species for which the univariate Ripley's K statistics had been described.
(5)           The landscape (for example a logging area) did not induce conspicuous point p..., , # Leaf area predicts conspecific spatial aggregation of woody species

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4b8gthtn2](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4b8gthtn2)

We present the dataset on which we base our meta-analysis and the code that we use to arrive to the results in the article.

## Description of the data and file structure

| ID | Study ID |
| :-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Authors | The authors of the study |
| Article.Title | The article title ...