Shifts in grasses diversity patterns between two contrasting 40-year climate periods in tropical dry islands

Grasses are one of the most successful and dispersed plant families worldwide and their environmental and economic values are widely acknowledged. They dominate the landscape of Cabo Verde, the southernmost and driest archipelago of Macaronesia, and are relevant natural resources for local populations, but a comprehensive evaluation of their distribution patterns is still lacking. In this study, we aim to evaluate the potential effects of climate changes using the long-term data concerning grass distribution in Cabo Verde and the widely recognized climatic variability of this archipelago, which entails a huge irregularity in spatial and temporal rainfall. We identified two contrasting climatic periods (wet, from 1929 to 1968, and dry, from 1969 to 2007) and gathered all the information available from the bibliography, herbaria and fieldwork concerning spontaneous grass species recorded in Cabo Verde during those two periods, which amounted to 107 taxa.  This information was then used to..., These data were mainly compiled from: 1) herbarium specimens housed in the following Herbaria: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, University of Lisbon (LISC), which holds the main collections from this geographical region; University of Coimbra (COI); Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (P); and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (K); local collections (e.g. Herbarium of the Parque Natural do Monte Gordo (PNMG), São Nicolau Island); 2) online databases such as the GBIF website that provide data on herbarium specimens and field observations (GBIF.org, 2020); 3) published works (namely Duarte, 1998; Duarte et al., 2005; Rivas-Martínez et al., 2017); and 4) unpublished data, including collected specimens and field observations dating from 1992 to 2006, done by the authors in Cabo Verde (mainly M.C. Duarte along with other collectors such as I. Gomes and J.C. Costa).
References
Duarte, M. C. 1998. A vegetação de Santiago (Cabo Verde): Apontamento histórico, composição florística..., , # Data from: Shifts in grasses diversity patterns between two contrasting 40-year climate periods in tropical dry islands

## Description of the Data and file structure

Raw data of spontaneous Poaceae species occurrences across the Cabo Verde archipelago. The data were obtained from the available bibliography, herbaria and fieldwork. This dataset contains a total of 3138 individual records corresponding to 107 taxa of Poaceae.

Source: origin of the individual records
Catalogue_Number: number registered on the original source
Actual_name: actual taxa scientific name
Year: year of collection/observation
Island: Cabo Verde island of occurrence
Latitude: latitude of the occurrence
Longitude: longitude of the occurrence