Data for: Resolving whole-plant economics from leaf, stem and root traits of 1467 Amazonian tree species

It remains unclear how evolutionary and ecological processes have shaped the wide variety of plant life strategies, especially in highly diverse ecosystems like tropical forests. Some evidence suggests that species have diversified across a gradient of ecological strategies, with different plant tissues converging to optimize resource use across environmental gradients. Alternative hypotheses propose that species have diversified following independent selection on different tissues, resulting in a decoupling of trait syndromes across organs.

To shed light on the subject, we assembled an unprecedented dataset combining 19 leaf, stem and root traits for 1467 tropical tree species inventoried across 71 0.1-ha plots spanning broad environmental gradients in French Guiana.

Nearly 50% of the overall functional heterogeneity was expressed along four orthogonal dimensions, after accounting for phylogenetic dependences among species. The first dimension related to fine root functioning, wh...