Data for: Limited adaptive responses in safety traits support greater hydraulic risk under drier conditions

Understanding how plants adjust their hydraulic system to the environment is essential to predict how these organisms will respond to global change. Here, we compiled a dataset of 223 studies on plastic and evolutionary adjustments of hydraulic traits to air temperature, CO2 concentration, irradiance, soil nutrient and water availability. On average, species plastically increased embolism resistance and sapwood area per leaf area under drier conditions, with a decrease in stem-specific hydraulic conductivity and water potential at the turgor loss point, which are consistent with adaptive responses. However, the average increased embolism resistance was not sufficient to compensate the reduction in the minimum water potential implying lower safety margin from lethal hydraulic failure under drought. These results point towards a general critical increase in the risk of hydraulic failure in future drier environments. Plastic responses to increased soil nutrient content and irradiance not always aligned with those to drought underscoring the potential of changes in irradiance and nutrition levels to modify plant hydraulic responses to climate change-driven droughts. Overall, our findings revealed that species exhibit phenotypic plasticity in hydraulic and drought tolerance traits that will be key to accommodating plant phenotypes to the new environmental conditions arising from ongoing global change.