Data from: Spatial storage effect promotes biodiversity during adaptive radiation

Many ecological communities are enormously diverse. Variation in
environmental conditions over time and space provides opportunities for
temporal and spatial storage effects to operate, potentially promoting
species coexistence and biodiversity. While several studies have provided
empirical evidence supporting the significance of the temporal storage
effect for coexistence, empirical tests of the role of the spatial storage
effect are rare. In particular, we know little about how the spatial
storage effect contributes to biodiversity over evolutionary timescales.
Here, we report the first experimental study on the role of the spatial
storage effect in the maintenance of biodiversity in evolving
metacommunities, using the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 as a
laboratory model of adaptive radiation. We found that intercommunity
spatial heterogeneity promoted phenotypic diversity of P. fluorescens in
the presence of dispersal among local communities, by allowing the spatial
storage effect to operate. Mechanistically, greater niche differences
among P. fluorescens phenotypes arose in metacommunities with
intercommunity spatial heterogeneity, facilitating negative
frequency-dependent selection, and thus, the coexistence among P.
fluorescens phenotypes. These results highlight the importance of the
spatial storage effect for biodiversity over evolutionary timescales.