Chemical properties of foliar metabolomes represent a key axis of functional trait variation in forests of the tropical Andes

Plants interact with their environment through diverse specialized metabolites that protect them from abiotic stressors like drought or radiation and biotic stressors like herbivores or pathogens. However, few studies have considered the chemical properties of metabolites as a potential axis of functional trait variation along environmental gradients.  Here, we examined how the chemical properties of foliar metabolomes, such as mean aromaticity, hydrophobicity, and polarity, as well as commonly used morphological traits, vary with climate and elevation among 16 forest plots in the tropical Andes of Bolivia. We found that chemical properties were weakly related to morphological traits among tree species, yet both varied significantly with climate and elevation. In particular, abundance-weighted mean hydrophobicity decreased, and polar surface area increased with elevation and in colder and drier climates. Additionally, co-occurring species showed increasing chemical similarity with ..., Forest plot data: The Madidi Project
            Floristic data were collected as part of the Madidi Project (www.mobot.org/madidi), a collaboration of more than two decades between the Herbario Nacional de Bolivia and the Missouri Botanical Garden to document the flora of the Madidi region in the Andes of Bolivia (35). The region features wide variation in plant communities over an extreme elevational gradient, from lowland rainforests located at 200 m above sea level (a.s.l.) to alpine environments above the tree line at 6,000 m a.s.l. (48). The Madidi Project includes 50 1-ha permanent forest plots ranging in elevation from 212 m to 3334 m a.s.l. We selected 16 1-hectare (ha) permanent plots in which leaves were sampled for chemical analysis and which represent broad variation in elevation (662-3324 m a.s.l.), climate, and tree species richness (17-137 species per 1-ha plot). The 16 plots include three seasonally dry, low-elevati..., # Chemical properties of foliar metabolomes represent a key axis of functional trait variation in forests of the tropical Andes

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.2rbnzs83c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2rbnzs83c)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: Chadwick_ProcB_10.1098_rspb.2025.1721_DatasetS1.csv

**Description:** Metadata file that provides nomenclature and trait data for every species-by-plot (i.e. a species that occurs in n plots is represented n times), including mean metabolome chemical properties, morphological trait values, and abudance-weighted chemical similarity to co-occurring species with respect to metabolites that represent the upper or lower quartile of metabolites for particular chemical properties. NA indicates data not available in the Madidi Project morphological traits dataset.

##### Variables

* sampleCode: Name of the LC-MS data file
* speciesCode: Six-character species code or morpho-species code
* Plot: Madidi Proje...,