Interspecific differences in the responses of root phosphatase activities and morphology to nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization in Bornean tropical rain forests

Soil organic phosphorus (P) compounds can be the main P source for plants in P‐limited tropical rainforests. Phosphorus occurs in diverse chemical forms, including monoester P, diester P, and phytate, which require enzymatic hydrolysis by phosphatase into inorganic P before assimilation by plants. The interactions between plant interspecific differences in organic P acquisition strategies via phosphatase activities with root morphological traits would lead to P resource partitioning, but they have not been rigorously evaluated. We measured the activities of three classes of phosphatases (phosphomonoesterase, PME; phosphodiesterase, PDE; and phytase, PhT), specific root length (SRL), root diameter, and root tissue density in mature tree species with different mycorrhizal associations (ectomycorrhizal [ECM] or arbuscular mycorrhizal [AM]) and different successional status (climax or pioneer species) in Sabah, Malaysia. We studied nitrogen (N)‐ and P‐fertilized plots to evaluate the acquis..., , , # Interspecific differences in the responses of root phosphatase activities and morphology to nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization in Bornean tropical rain forests

Dataset DOI: [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.905qfttm3](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.905qfttm3)

## Description of the data and file structure

This is supplementary data used for analysis in the paper entitled “Interspecific differences in the responses of root phosphatase activities and morphology to nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization in Bornean tropical rain forests”. The csv files include the information on species name and values of root phosphatases and morphology. There are some missing data because of limited sample availability, which are indicated as NA.

### Files and variables

#### File: Apase.csv and Morphology.csv

##### Variables

Common variable names:

* species: Species name of the sampled individual.
* treatment: fertilization treatment. C: control, N: N fertilization, P: P fertilization, NP: N and P...,