Climate and the biotic community structure plant resistance across biogeographic groups of yellow monkeyflower

Characterizing correlates of phytochemical resistance trait variation across a landscape can provide insight into the ecological factors that have shaped the evolution of resistance arsenals. Using field-collected data and a greenhouse common garden experiment, we assessed the relative influences of abiotic and biotic drivers of genetic-based defense trait variation across 41 yellow monkeyflower populations from western and eastern North America and the United Kingdom. Populations experience different climates, herbivore communities, and neighboring vegetative communities, and have distinct phytochemical resistance arsenals. Similarities in climate, as well as herbivore and vegetative communities, decline with increasing physical distance separating populations, and phytochemical resistance arsenal composition shows a similarly decreasing trend. Of the abiotic and biotic factors examined, temperature and the neighboring vegetation community had the strongest relative effects on resistan..., Data were generated using field surveys at 41 Mimulus guttatus populations and in a greenhouse common garden at Northern Arizona University (see manuscript for additional methods). , This upload contains input data (.csv and .Robj) and scripts (.R) used for analysis and generating figures.  See the included README.txt file for additional details and metadata. All analyses and figure generation were conducted in R.