Data from: Resistance of plant–plant networks to biodiversity loss and secondary extinctions following simulated environmental changes

1. Plant interactions are fundamental processes for structuring plant
communities and are an important mechanism governing the response of plant
species and communities to environmental changes. Thus, understanding the
role played by the interaction network in modulating the impact of
environmental changes on plant community composition and diversity is
crucial. Here, we aimed to develop a new analytical and conceptual
framework to evaluate the responses of plant communities to environmental
changes. 2. This framework uses functional traits as sensitivity measures
for simulated environmental changes and assesses the consequences of
microhabitat loss. We show here its application to an alpine plant
community where we recorded functional traits (specific leaf area [SLA]
and leaf dry matter content [LDMC]) of all plants associated with three
foundation species or the surrounding open areas. We then simulated
primary species loss based on different scenarios of environmental change
and explored community persistence to the loss of foundation species. 3.
Generally, plant community responses differed among environmental change
scenarios. In a scenario of increasing drought alone (i.e. species with
lower LDMC were lost first) or increasing drought with increasing
temperature (i.e. species with lower LDMC and higher SLA were lost first),
the plant community resisted because drought-tolerant foundation species
tolerated those deteriorating conditions. However, in a scenario with
increasing nitrogen input (i.e. species having lower SLA were lost
earlier), foundation species accelerated species loss due to their early
primary extinctions and the corresponding secondary extinctions of species
associated to their microhabitat. 4. The resistance of a plant community
depends on the driver of environmental change, meaning that the prediction
of the fate of this system is depending on the knowledge of the main
driver of environmental change. Our framework provides a mechanistic
understanding of an ecosystem response to such environmental changes
thanks to the integration of biology-informed criteria of species
sensitivities to environmental factors into a network of interacting
species.