Data from: Leaf traits of African woody savanna species across climate and soil fertility gradients: evidence for conservative vs. acquisitive resource use strategies

1. Establishing trade-offs among traits and the degree to which they
co-vary along environmental gradients has become a key focal point in the
effort to develop community ecology into a predictive science. While there
is evidence for these relationships across global datasets, they are often
too broad in scale, and do not consider the particularities of local to
regional species pools. This decreases their usefulness for developing
predictive models at scales relevant for conservation and management. 2.
We tested for trade-offs between traits and relationships with
environmental gradients in trees and shrubs sampled across southern
African savannas and explored evidence for acquisitive vs. conservative
resource use strategies using a phylogenetically explicit approach. 3. We
found a distinct trade-off between two major poles of specialization
indicative of acquisitive (high leaf nitrogen concentration (LNC), leaf
phosphorus concentration (LPC), leaf N:P, specific leaf area (SLA) and
average leaf area (ALA)) and conservative resource use strategies (high
leaf carbon to nitrogen ratios (C:N), tensile strength (TS) and leaf dry
matter content (LDMC)). Although we found that trait variance and species
occurrence were constrained by phylogeny, phylogenetically informed
analyses did not contradict non-phylogenetic analyses, strengthening
relationships in most cases. 4. The high intra-site trait variability and
weak relationships with soils and climate may in part be explained by the
high levels of deciduousness and disturbance (i.e. fire and herbivory)
inherent in African savannas. 5. Synthesis: The relationships between
traits and between traits and environmental gradients were far weaker
than, and often contradictory to, broad scale studies that compare these
relationships across biomes and growth forms, cautioning against making
generalizations about relationships at specific sites based on broad scale
analyses.