Niche conservatism and sympatric parallel evolution may help to maintain eight nascent tree taxa along a sharp elevation gradient

Patterns of niche partitioning among closely related taxa, such as those in incipient adaptive radiations, can provide clues into how niches are created, partitioned, and integrated over ecological and evolutionary time scales. Hawaiian Metrosideros is a ~3-MYO adaptive radiation of trees that dominates the Hawaiian Islands in continuous stands within islands and allows examination of niche partitioning at the early stages of adaptive radiation. We monitored growth and survivorship in a greenhouse over two years of seedlings derived from open-pollinated fruits of eight Metrosideros taxa distributed along the elevation gradient of KoÊ»olau Volcano, OÊ»ahu, under four combinations of light and phosphorus. We included four glabrous taxa, representing mixed lineages, and four pubescent taxa, representing a single, OÊ»ahu-endemic lineage and tested hypotheses of differentiation among taxa and between glabrous and pubescent groups.  Several phenotypic traits were measured at the s..., , # Niche conservatism and sympatric parallel evolution may help to maintain eight nascent tree taxa along a sharp elevation gradient

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.w3r22813x](10.5061/dryad.w3r22813x)

## Description of the data and file structure

These 4 files include seedling morphological data recorded at the start and end of the 2-year greenhouse experiment in which seedlings of 8 Oahu Metrosideros taxa were grown under 4 combinations of light and phosphorus.  Also included are measures of relative growth rate (RGR) and biweekly survivorship throughout the experiment.

### Files and variables

#### File: 1\_Stacy\_Ostertag\_initial\_morphology.csv

**Description:** Morphology of seedlings at the start of the experiment.

##### Variables

* abs_ID: (character) = absolute plant ID
* light: (character) = Low, High
* phosphorus: (character) = Low, High
* taxon: (character) = eight letters representing eight taxa

B = *Metrosideros polymorpha* race B, C = *M. polymorpha* race C, F = *M. p...,