Data from: Emergence of a resource acquisition tradeoff at the community scale during environmental change

Biomass-weighted mean traits of a community’s constituent species are a
useful tool to assess environmental filtering in community function in
response to environmental change. We show that annually averaged
phytoplankton community function, expressed by the community mean traits
phosphate and light affinity, responded strongly and reversibly to
long-term changes in nutrient supply over a 42-year period of
eutrophication and re-oligotrophication of Lake Constance. Within the
lake’s species pool, phosphate and light affinities were weakly negatively
correlated, suggesting a weak physiological tradeoff. Yet, a strong
tradeoff between these traits emerged when species were weighted by their
biomass, suggesting species sorting along the tradeoff line across years
of shifting nutrient status. Emergent tradeoffs, i.e. tradeoffs that
become apparent first when trait combinations are weighted by the
contributions of the trait-bearing organisms to community biomass, may be
a useful, novel concept in trait-based ecology of potentially similar
importance as commonly considered physiological tradeoffs.