Data for: Carbon-concentrating mechanisms are a key trait in lichen ecology and distribution

Carbon-concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) are a widespread phenomenon in photosynthetic organisms. In vascular plants, the evolution of CCMs (C4 and CAM) is associated with significant shifts, most often to hot, dry and bright or aquatic environments. If and how CCMs drive distributions of other terrestrial photosynthetic organisms, remains little studied. Lichens are ecologically important obligate symbioses between fungi and photosynthetic organisms. The primary photosynthetic partner in these symbioses can include CCM-presenting cyanobacteria (as carboxysomes), CCM-presenting green algae (as pyrenoids) or green algae lacking any CCM. We use an extensive dataset of lichen communities from eastern North America, spanning a wide climatic range, to test the importance of CCMs as predictors of lichen ecology and distribution. We show that presence or absence of CCMs leads to opposite responses to temperature and precipitation in green algal lichens, and with different responses in cyanobacte..., This dataset consists of data on lichen communities from temperate eastern North America. It comprises presence/absence species occurrence data from intensive expert-based inventories of 630 one-hectare plots. The plots were sampled during three large-scale regional lichen biodiversity inventory projects led by James Lendemer and colleagues: 208 plots in the southern Appalachian Mountains (see Tripp et al. 2019), 204 plots in the northern Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania (see Lendemer and Coyle 2021), and 215 plots in the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain (see McMullin et al. 2019). 
Methods of site delimitation and sampling are described fully in the publications cited for each project. In brief, each plot was delimited at one-hectare, allowing for an irregular shape to ensure each consisted of a single vegetation type (e.g., swamp forest, spruce-fir forest). Within each plot an expert-based inventory of all lichens was carried out using a Floristic Habitat Sampling approach to more effe..., Any program that opens csv files.