Relationships between flowering phenology and community composition in an experimental restoration of northwest prairies

Phenology, the timing of biological life cycles, is a key indicator of global climatic change, with numerous studies showing that species' phenologies are shifting in response to climate change. Despite general trends (e.g., warming causing earlier arrival of spring events such as leaf-out and flowering onset), studies repeatedly reveal that phenological changes tend to be species-specific and thus may alter species interactions. Less studied is the potential feedback between biotic interactions and phenology and the impacts on species’ fitness. To understand the consequences of shifting phenology for species and communities, we need to quantify how phenology and competition interact to affect species’ fitness. Here, we studied the potentially interacting effects of species’ phenology and competition on plant fecundity (as a proxy for fitness). We sowed seeds of various species combinations to test how variation in competitor species richness, identities, and densities affect the phenol..., We conducted our research along the south bank of the Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon (44.05 ºN, 123.07 ºS, approximately 130m elevation). This region has a Mediterranean climate with warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters (12.06 ºC average annual temperature, 961.1 mm average annual precipitation). Historically, the research site was composed primarily of riparian hardwood forest and upland prairie vegetation before being degraded by industrial land use (e.g., railroad development, gravel mining, and fill deposit) starting in the mid-19th century. Since 1989, it has been under the management of the University of Oregon and is currently part of a 24-acre area designated as the Willamette River Natural Area (WRNA) which aims to promote habitat restoration, education, research, and recreation opportunities (Krueger 2022). Drawing on our site’s history of habitat loss and its location within the WRNA, we aimed to conduct this experiment in a way which informed local restoration efforts..., # Relationships between flowering phenology and community composition in an experimental restoration of northwest prairies

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.dr7sqvb9w](10.5061/dryad.dr7sqvb9w)

## Description of the data and file structure

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### Files and variables

#### File: data_Dryad.csv

**Description:** 

##### Variables

* id: unique focal plant ID (unique plant identifier)
* first_flw: date of first flower   (format: month/day/year)
* last_flw: date of last flower   (format: month/day/year)
* density_category: categorical neighborhood density  (alone/medium/high)
* fruit_count: total plant fruit count  (integer)
* mortality: binary mortality    (0/1)
* flw_length: length of flowering period   (units:  number of days)
* fecundity: plant fecundity (seeds)   (units:  number of seeds)
* N_total: total number of competitors   (units:  number of competitor plants)
* Competitor: identity of competitor   (species 6-letter codes)
* N_comp: number of competitors of Competitor identity  ...,