Interspecific variation in leaf phenology and its relationship with plant traits in a seasonal tropical forest

Leaf phenology plays an important role in plant life history strategies and in determining ecosystem-level fluxes of carbon and water. In seasonal tropical forests, leaf phenology is highly variable among tree species, but limited quantitative data have hindered our understanding of leaf phenology, and its relationship with other plant traits.
We investigated leaf phenology and its relationship to plant traits in 48 tree species in a seasonally dry tropical forest. Our study combined image time-series acquired by uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) with ground-based forest inventories and plant functional and life-history traits.
Quantitative metrics of phenology revealed wide variation along two dimensions –the degree and timing of deciduousness – with large interspecific variation. We categorized each species to one of three phenological groups: evergreen (25 species, leaf cover always > 60%), early deciduous (six species), and late deciduous (17 species). Early deciduous species were ..., , # Interspecific variation in leaf phenology and its relationship with plant traits in a seasonal tropical forest

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk84](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk84)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data from manuscript title \"Interspecific variation in leaf phenology and its relationship with plant traits in seasonal tropical forest\" from functional ecology. \"table_s1.csv\" list all the species included in this study, along with their phenology metrics and trait values.\"table_s5.csv\" contain data for model-driven estimated leaf cover time series employed in this study.

### Files and variables

#### Table S1. List of species included in this study, along with their phenology metrics and trait values. The table is provided as a comma delimited file (Table_S1.csv).

Column definitions:

● spcode: species code used in figures.

● genus_species: scientific name of species

● family: taxonomic family of the genus

● group: phenology species group as...,