Spatial and temporal variation in the diversity, abundance, and energetic returns of underground storage organs on the coastal lowlands of the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa

This package contains data and related R script (and README file explaining the organisation of this package) which accompany the research paper with the same title submitted to the Journal of Archaeological Science, with submission ID JASC25-178. This research assessed species with underground storage organs (USOs) on the coastal lowlands of the Cape Floristic Region (CFR) in terms of their richness, abundance, and energetic returns across regions, seasons and biome types. We surveyed 212 sites equally in the growing (spring) and dormant (autumn) seasons and across three biomes (Fynbos, Renosterveld, Strandveld) in each of three regions (west, south, and southeast coasts). In all the surveyed regions, richness, abundance, and energetic returns of edible USOs peaked in winter/spring and were dominated by high-energy cormous species. On an annual basis, energetic returns were highest on the south coast, owing to USO apparency peaking in autumn, a feature absent at the other sites. In all regions, hotspots of USO energetic returns were rare, but most common on the south coast. Energetic returns were mostly higher in Strandveld than in Fynbos and Renosterveld.