Data for: Associations between leaf developmental stability, canalization and phenotypic plasticity in an architectural perspective

Associations between developmental stability, canalization and phenotypic plasticity have been predicted, but rarely supported by direct evidence. Architectural analysis may provide a more powerful approach to finding correlations among these mechanisms in plants. To investigate the relationships among the three mechanisms in architectural perspective, we subjected plants of Abutilon theophrasti to three densities, measured and calculated fluctuating asymmetry (FA), coefficients of variation (CV) and plasticity (PI) of three leaf traits, to analyze the correlations among these variables. As density increased, mean leaf size, petiole length and angle of most layers and mean leaf FA of some layers decreased (at both stages), CV of petiole angle increased (at day 50), and PI of petiole length and angle across all layers decreased (at day 70); leaf FA and CV of traits generally increased with higher layers at all densities. At both stages, there were more positive correlations between FA an..., The experiment was conducted in a research-special field at the Pasture Ecological Research Station of Northeast Normal University, Changling, Jilin province, China (123°44 E, 44°40 N) in 2007. The soil (aeolian sandy soil, pH = 8.3) of the experimental field was a little infertile because of frequent utilization annually, thus we covered the field with a layer of 5-10 cm virgin soil (meadow soil, pH = 8.2) transported from the nearby meadow (with no cultivation history) in the north of the research station, to improve the soil quality (Wang & Zhou 2021b). A completely randomized design was implemented with three density treatments and three replicate plots randomly distributed into nine plots of 2 × 3 m in size. Low, medium and high densities were set up by sowing seeds at three inter-planting distances of 30, 20 and 10 cm, to reach the target plant densities of 12.8, 27.5 and 108.5 plants·m-2 respectively. Seeds were sown on June 7, 2007, and most seeds emerged four days later aft..., , # Data for: Associations between leaf developmental stability, canalization and phenotypic plasticity in an architectural perspective

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cjsxksn8s](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cjsxksn8s)

A completely randomized design was implemented with three density treatments and three replicate plots randomly distributed into nine plots of 2 × 3 m in size. Low, medium and high densities were set up by sowing seeds at three inter-planting distances of 30, 20 and 10 cm, to reach the target plant densities of 12.8, 27.5 and 108.5 plants·m-2 respectively. Plants were sampled at day 50 and 70 of growth after seedling emergence, representing the developmental stages of late vegetative growth or early reproductive growth and mid-late reproductive growth respectively. At each sampling, five to six individuals were randomly chosen from each plot, making the maximum total of 6 individuals × 3 plots × 3 densities × 2 stages = 108 sampling. Each individual was divided into diffe...