Data and code from: Is a plant truly plastic? Nutrients and neighbours induce trait-specific responses, but performance depends on response direction

Plants live in a heterogeneous world, where nutrient and neighbour distributions vary in space and time. Plants can respond to this variation through plastic responses in individual organs, which are assumed to be coordinated among traits to support a coherent, adaptive strategy, maintaining plant growth in varying environments. However, this assumption remains understudied. Here, we test coordination in trait plasticity and its influence on plant performance. We do so among 27 naturally co-occurring species under four different neighbour and soil fertility contexts using data from two mesocosm experiments manipulating nutrients and neighbour presence. We focus on commonly-studied resource-acquisitive traits: specific leaf area (SLA), root tissue density (RTD), and specific root length (SRL). We found species exhibited plasticity in SLA, RTD, and SRL 50-75 % of the time and that responses to neighbours were stronger than nutrients for SLA and RTD, but not SRL. However, plastic responses..., , # Data and code from: Is a plant truly plastic? Nutrients and neighbours induce trait-specific responses, but performance depends on response direction

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh88](10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh88)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data and code for \"Is a Plant Truly Plastic? Nutrients and Neighbours Induce Trait-Specific Responses, but Performance Depends on Response Direction\"

Dataset: dataset where data came from

Spp: 3-letter species code

Block: block number within each mesocosm study

Nitrogen: whether the mesocosm was fertilized (1) or not (0)

Compete: whether the focal plant in mesocosm underwent competition (1) or not (0)

CompeteWith: unique id for competing neighbour

id: unique id

Tot_BioFin_g: total biomass (shoot and root) of focal plant. units in grams.

AvgSLA_cm2mg: average specific leaf area of 3 leaves of focal plant. units in cm2/mg.

RTD_mg_cm3: root tissue density of focal plant. units in mg/cm3

SRL_cm_mg: specific root length ...,