Data from: Plant canopies promote climatic disequilibrium in Mediterranean recruit communities

Current rates of climate change are exceeding the capacity of many plant
species to track climate, thus leading communities to be in disequilibrium
with climatic conditions. Plant canopies can contribute to this
disequilibrium by buffering macro-climatic conditions and sheltering
poorly adapted species to the oncoming climate, particularly in their
recruitment stages. Here we analyze differences in climatic disequilibrium
between understory and open ground woody plant recruits in 28 localities,
covering more than 100,000 m2, across an elevation range embedding
temperature and aridity gradients in the southern Iberian Peninsula. This
study demonstrates higher climatic disequilibrium under canopies compared
with open ground, supporting that plant canopies would affect future
community climatic lags by allowing the recruitment of less arid-adapted
species in warm and dry conditions, but also it endorse that canopies
could favor warm-adapted species in extremely cold environments as
mountain tops, thus pre-adapting communities living in these habitats to
climate change.