Functional and phylogenetic implications of forest Mesophication in temperate hardwood forests

Forest mesophication involves the shifting of plant communities from fire-adapted, drought tolerant systems to those dominated by species better adapted to shaded, closed-canopy environments. While commonly understood from a taxonomic perspective, the phylogenetic underpinnings and functional implications of forest mesophication have received less quantitative testing. We applied phylogenetic and functional trait data to legacy datasets of changing forest composition in Wisconsin from the latter half of the 20th century. In both the 1950s and 2000s, forests demonstrated a phylogenetically clustered structure, with closely related species occupying similar sites. The inclusion of functional traits into models accounted for 42% of the variance explained by this clustering in the 1950s and just 16% in the 2000s. This diminished explanatory value of functional traits corresponds with overall shifts in functional diversity, with the majority of sites being dissimilar from their 1950s trait s..., Raw trait data are provided for reproducibility. Community composition data is provided in wide format, with sites as rows and environmental variables/species as columns., , # Data from: Functional and phylogenetic implications of forest Mesophication in temperate hardwood forests

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xrx](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xrx)

## Description of the data and file structure

Trait data is provide at the individual/replicate level, with functional trait data all being collected from a single specimen and flammability replicates referring to data collected from ~15g litter samples.  

Community composition data is comprised of overstory frequency data collected by Curtis (1959) and Rogers (2005) for southern WI temperate forests.  Environmental data from latitude, canopy Basal Area, and soil nutrient analysis are provided, with units present in column titles. 

### Files and variables

#### File: CommunityComposition.csv

**Description:** Composition data, with each row representing a site and each column representing site-level environmental variables or species frequency within the overstory individuals (n=80) at each sit..., ,