Environmental conditions differently shape leaf, seed and seedling trait composition between and within elevations of tropical montane forests

The composition of plant functional traits varies in response to environmental conditions due to processes of community assembly and species sorting. However, there is a lack of understanding of how plant trait composition responds to environmental conditions at different spatial scales and across the plant life cycle. We investigated the trait composition of leaves (specific leaf area), seeds (seed mass) and seedlings (initial seedling height) across elevations and within elevations in relation to soil and light conditions in a tropical montane forest in southern Ecuador. We surveyed traits and communities of adult trees, seeds and seedlings on nine plots at three elevations (1000-3000 m a.s.l.) and calculated community-weighted mean trait values to analyse trait variation across and within elevations. In addition, we measured two environmental factors (soil C/N ratio and canopy openness) to quantify local-scale variation in environmental conditions within elevations. We found that com..., Seedling recruitment along the elevational gradient (1000, 2000 and 3000 m a.s.l.) in primary forest of Podocarpus National Park and San Francisco Reserve. The data was collected on 81 study subplots in the years 2019 and 2020. The dataset includes height measurements of recruting seedlings., , # Environmental conditions differently shape leaf, seed and seedling trait composition between and within elevations of tropical montane forests

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5mkkwh7f6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5mkkwh7f6)

#### Description of the data and file structure

Time of data collection: Between August 2019 and July 2020

Geographic location of data collection: Podocarpus National Park and San Francisco Reserve, Ecuador

**DATA & FILE OVERVIEW**

dataset’s name

\"recruitment-census_Ecuador2020_PodocarpusNP_MB_oikos2024.csv\": Data on seedling recruitment collected during one year seedling monitoring along an 2000-m elevational gradient in southern Ecuador

elevation: meters about sea level of one of the three elevations (1000, 2000 or 3000 m a.s.l.), where the study plots were situated

plot: plot id (9 plots)

subplot: subplot id (81 recruitment census subplots)

family: taxonomic family of plant species; NA means that no seedlings were found in the subplot

species: ...