Nurse plant shading is more important than soil fertility for dryland plant recruitment and diversity

”Islands” of plants surrounded by little vegetation cover in drylands are thought to arise when larger plants facilitate recruitment via “nurse-plant” effects. Simultaneously, plant-soil feedback processes can increase soil nutrients beneath shrubs, leading to spatial patterns known as “islands of fertility.” These phenomena shape dryland plant communities; however, their relative influences on plant density and diversity remain poorly quantified. Using reciprocal soil transplants among pairs of unvegetated interspaces and neighboring shrubs in combination with different cover treatments—open interspace, shaded interspace, intact shrub canopy, and trimmed shrub canopy—this study aimed to disentangle the influences of shading from soil properties in native plant recruitment under the foundational shrub species Larrea tridentata and Neltuma glandulosa in the northern Chihuahuan Desert, NM, USA. Seedling density varied significantly across the three study years in response to interannual c..., , # **Nurse plant shading is more important than soil fertility for dryland plant recruitment and diversity**

## **Description of the Data and File Structure**

This dataset provides plant seedling counts, plant species richness, nurse shrub characteristics, and nurse plant neighborhood characteristics collected in 2020, 2021, and 2022 during the late summer to early autumn monsoon season from 30 study blocks, 15 each where creosote bush (Larrea tridenta) or honey mesquite (Neltuma glandulosa) were the focal nurse shrubs in southern New Mexico's Chihuhuan Desert. Each study block contained 4, 1 m x 1 m study plots that were associated with cover treatments that included: intact shrub, trimmed shrub (aboveground biomass removed at the ground level), shaded interspace (shrub-interspace shaded with 80% woven shade cloth), and open shrub interspace (no cover). Each of these 4 plots contained 4, 30 x 30 cm sub-plots associated with soil treatments that included: control (no disturbance/no see...,