Competitors alter selection on alpine plants exposed to experimental climate change

Investigating how climate change alters selection regimes is a crucial step towards understanding the potential of populations to evolve in the face of changing conditions. Previous studies have mainly focused on understanding how changing climate directly influences selection, while the role of species’ interactions has received little attention. Here, we used a transplant experiment along an elevation gradient to estimate how climate warming and competitive interactions lead to shifts in directional phenotypic selection on morphology and phenology of four alpine plants. We found that warming generally imposed novel selection, with the largest shifts in regimes acting on specific leaf area and flowering time across species. Competitors instead weakened the selection acting on traits that was imposed directly by warming. Weakened or absent selection in the presence of competitors was largely associated with the suppression of absolute means and variation of fitness. Our results suggest ..., , , # Competitors alter selection on alpine plants exposed to experimental climate change

The data derives from a transplant experiment performed along an elevation gradient in Switzerland from 2016-2019, where four alpine plant species where transplanted from high (2200) to three lower elevations either in the absence or presence of competitors. The dataset includes traits (stalk height, specific leaf area, flowering time and floral size) as well as information on survival, seed production and flowering for individuals across the experiment.

## Description of the data and file structure

Explanation of columns in dataset:

* Column \"Site\" includes data on the experimental site to which plants were transplanted. \"P\" = 1400 m a.s.l., \"M\" = 1750 m a.s.l., \"C\" = 1950 m a.s.l. and \"R\" = 2200 m a.s.l.
* Column \"Block\" includes data on the experimental block to which plants were transplanted within each site (1-10)
* Column \"Competition\" includes data on the competitor treatment. \"No_co...