Data and code for "Responses of plant biomass and biomass allocation to experimental drought: a global phylogenetic meta-analysis"

Divergent responses of plant biomass to drought were found across hundreds of manipulative experiments. While many researchers have explored the influences of plant functional types (PFTs) and climatic conditions, few studies focus on the importance of evolutionary history to biomass responses to drought. Here we compiled a global dataset of the responses of plant biomass and biomass allocation to the experimental drought from 281 studies conducted on 329 wild species and conducted both traditional and phylogenetic meta-analyses to explore the potential role of phylogenetic information (the proxy of evolutionary history) in affecting the differences among PFTs and the regulation effect of environmental conditions. We found that there were no consistent differences in biomass responses to drought between gymnosperm and angiosperm woody plants when the traditional meta-analysis was applied. Taking the phylogenetic information into account by applying the phylogenetic meta-analysis consistently resulted in more sensitive responses in gymnosperms than angiosperms. These differences between gymnosperms and angiosperms were large but with high uncertainty, probably due to the high hydraulic diversity in both groups. Within gymnosperms, the observed higher drought sensitivity in evergreen species than deciduous ones was mainly derived from the phylogenetic relatedness among species. Similarly, weaker biomass response to drought in C4 than C3 herbs was also largely due to the phylogenetic relatedness as most C4 plants clustered in a clade called PACMAD (Panicoideae, Aristidoideae, Chloridoideae, Micrairoideae, Arundinoideae, and Danthonioideae) in Poaceae family. The influences of drought intensity were prevalent in both traditional and phylogenetic meta-analyses. Overall, our results highlight the vital role of plant evolutionary history played in affecting plant responses to drought. Given the potentially complicated interactive effects of climatic change and evolutionary history on plant responses, we call for experiments that aim to investigate the role of phylogenetic relatedness on plant and ecosystem functions in future studies.