Data for: Adaptive plasticity to drought of Grime’s CSR strategies

Grime’s strategies (Competitor, Stress tolerator, Ruderal; CSR) represent viable trait combinations with which species deal with environmental conditions. CSR strategies are broadly used to understand plant adaptation to the environment, yet their plastic responses have received little attention. A globally-calibrated tool (StrateFy) estimates CSR strategies using specific leaf area (SLA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC) and leaf area (LA) data, but these three traits can hardly characterise whole-plant responses to the environment individually. CSR strategies reflect trade-offs among growth, survival and reproduction, at both leaf and whole-plant levels, thus integrating several functions. We hypothesised that CSR strategies and the three constituent traits would show independent plasticity patterns, and that CSR strategies would be more likely to show adaptive responses, i.e., to fit expected functional responses to environmental gradients. We compared phenotypic plasticity to drought ..., Mesembryanthemum crystallinum is an annual succulent native to South Africa that has invaded (semi)arid regions worldwide (Adams et al. 1998). In Chile, M. crystallinum is distributed in coastal areas between 24°S and 34°S, from the Atacama Desert to Mediterranean regions (Fuentes et al. 2013, Madrigal-González et al. 2013). We assessed phenotypic plasticity to drought in M. crystallinum in a greenhouse experiment with two watering treatments (moist vs drought). Seeds were collected in ten coastal populations distributed between 29.10°S and 30.56°S (Supporting information). We sowed ca. 400 seeds from each population (20 seeds from 20 mother plants) in 1-L pots filled with a mixture (2:1) of sand and field-collected soil. Soil was collected in a site close to the centre of the distribution range of M. crystallinum in Chile (El Romeral; see Supplementary material); specifically, we collected soil from microsites free from M. crystallinum, where soil salinity is not high enough to trigger...,