Plant regeneration trait syndromes, trade-offs, and linkages to adult abundance for native and exotic grassland plants

Recruitment is the most sensitive plant life stage to environmental filters. Yet, most research linking functional traits to environmental filters has focused on adult plants with little known about early plant traits, their interactions with environmental filters, or their relation to species abundance. Likewise, how such relationships might vary between native and exotic species or influence plant invasion outcomes is unclear. We quantified regeneration traits for 12 native and 12 exotic (naturalized and invasive) forbs and evaluated trait relationships and their associations with species abundance across an environmental gradient in semi-arid grasslands. Species differentiated along two orthogonal trait axes suggestive of two distinct trait syndromes. The first trait syndrome, likely associated with competitive ability, was correlated with seed mass and growth-related seedling traits. Conversely, the second trait syndrome revealed a tradeoff between traits related to development and ..., , # Plant regeneration trait syndromes, trade-offs, and linkages to adult abundance for native and exotic grassland plants

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.d2547d8db](10.5061/dryad.d2547d8db)

## Description of the data and file structure

This readme was generated on April 15, 2025, by Mandy Slate.

**Contact**: Mandy Slate; Ohio State University; [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

#### **File list (4):**

**Slate_RegenSyndrome_sitedata.csv**

      Location information with bioclim variables added for each of our 31 sites

**Slate_RegenSyndrome_traitdata.csv**

     Trait means and traitPCA scores for each of our 24 study species and 8 functional traits

**Slate_RegenSyndrome_traitabundance.csv**

    Combined site and trait datasets with abundance data for each of 24 species across 31 sites

**Slate_RegenSyndrome_R.R**

     R code for replicating analyses and generating figures; R version 4.3.0

##### Data-specific information for Slate_RegenSyndrome_sitedata.csv

**Number of va...,