Skip to main content
Powered by ShareScore

Find research datasets worth reusing

Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.

1,102

datasets available to search

ShareScore release 0.7.1

Reset

Dataset results

1,102 results for “plant diversity”

Learn how ShareScore rates datasets ↗
edi40/100

Local plant diversity and soybean biological control 2011 Harvest Measures:Biodiversity II: Effects of Plant Biodiversity on Population and Ecosystem Processes

Biodiversity II (E120) is designed to determine how the number of plant species affects the dynamics of ecological processes at the population, community, and ecosystem levels. By experimentally manipulating the number of species and the kinds of species, the amount of plant growth and the change from year to year, that result can be examined. Plots are large (9m x 9m actively maintained) and well-replicated, allowing responses of plant pathogens, insect herbivores, seed predators, soil parameters, invasive plant species and other variables to also be studied. Plots were seeded in May 1994 to have 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 species, with roughly 30 replicates of each diversity level. The species composition of each plot was chosen by random draw from a pool of 18 grassland perennials that included four warm-season (C4) grasses, four cool-season (C3) grasses, four legumes, four non-legume forbs, and two woody species. All species occur in monoculture allowing comparison of responses of each species in monoculture to combinations of these same species. The experiment was established in 1994 by the lead investigators David Tilman, Peter Reich, Johannes Knops, and David Wedin. Experiment 120 is similar to Experiment 123, but it uses larger plots to provide a large capacity for long-term subexperiments.

openCC0Feb 2018View details →
edi40/100

Local plant diversity and soybean biological control 2012 Aphid Surveys:Biodiversity II: Effects of Plant Biodiversity on Population and Ecosystem Processes

Biodiversity II (E120) is designed to determine how the number of plant species affects the dynamics of ecological processes at the population, community, and ecosystem levels. By experimentally manipulating the number of species and the kinds of species, the amount of plant growth and the change from year to year, that result can be examined. Plots are large (9m x 9m actively maintained) and well-replicated, allowing responses of plant pathogens, insect herbivores, seed predators, soil parameters, invasive plant species and other variables to also be studied. Plots were seeded in May 1994 to have 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 species, with roughly 30 replicates of each diversity level. The species composition of each plot was chosen by random draw from a pool of 18 grassland perennials that included four warm-season (C4) grasses, four cool-season (C3) grasses, four legumes, four non-legume forbs, and two woody species. All species occur in monoculture allowing comparison of responses of each species in monoculture to combinations of these same species. The experiment was established in 1994 by the lead investigators David Tilman, Peter Reich, Johannes Knops, and David Wedin. Experiment 120 is similar to Experiment 123, but it uses larger plots to provide a large capacity for long-term subexperiments.

openCC0Feb 2018View details →
edi40/100

N and P fertilization experiment plant species composition and diversity data for South of saddle, 1990 - 2000.

The effects of nitrogen, phosphorus, and nitrogen+phosphorus fertilization on alpine plant species composition and diversity in a dry and a wet meadow community were examined. A point-quadrat system was used to estimate the cover frequencies for each species in plots in the 2 communities on the south slope of Niwot Ridge. Treatments were N, P, N+P, and control. Observations were made once per year per plot over a period of several years. Diversity (Shannon-Weaver) indices were also calculated.

openCC (other)Dec 2019View details →
zenodo36/100

Replication code and data for: "Machine Learning Predicts Large Scale Declines in Native Plant Phylogenetic Diversity."

<p>Replication code and data for the paper: &quot;Machine Learning Predicts Large Scale Declines in Native Plant Phylogenetic Diversity.&quot; The following files are included in this repository:</p> <p>1) R scripts (numbered 0 through 9) include replication code for data analysis</p> <p>2) Datasets (6 zip folders) contain the data analyzed in&nbsp;the R scripts</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2020View details →
zenodo36/100

Plant invasion has limited impact on soil microbial alpha-diversity : a meta-analysis

<p>Plant invasion has proved to be a significant driver of ecosystem change, and with increased probability of invasion due to globalization, agricultural practices and other anthropogenic causes, it is crucial to understand its impact across multiple trophic levels. With the strong linkages between above and belowground processes, the response of soil microorganisms to plant invasion is the next logical step in developing our conceptual understanding of this complex system. In our study, we utilized a meta-analytical approach to better understand the impacts of plant invasion on soil microbial diversity. We synthesized 70 independent studies with 23 unique invaders across multiple ecosystem types to search for generalizable trends in soil microbial a-diversity following invasion. When possible, soil nutrient metrics were also collected in an attempt to understand the contribution of nutrient status shifts on microbial a-diversity. Our results show plant invasion to have highly heterogenous and limited impacts on microbial a-diversity. When taken together, our study indicates soil microbial a-diversity to remain constant following invasion, contrary to the aboveground counter parts. As our results suggest a decoupling in patterns of below and aboveground diversity, future work is needed to examine the drivers of microbial diversity patterns following invasion.</p>

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Agricultural intensification reduces plant taxonomic and functional diversity across European arable systems.

<p>1. Agricultural intensification is one of the main drivers of species loss worldwide, but there is still a lack of information about its effect on functional diversity of arable weeds communities.</p> <p>2. Using a large scale pan European study including 786 fields within 261 farms from eight countries, we analysed differences in the taxonomic and functional diversity of arable weeds assemblages across different levels of agricultural intensification in. We estimated weed species frequency in each field, and collected species' traits (vegetative height, specific leaf area and seed mass) from the TRY plant trait database. With this information we estimated taxonomic (species richness), functional composition (community weighted means) and functional diversity (functional richness, evenness, divergence and redundancy). We used indicators of agricultural management intensity at the individual field scale (e.g. yield, inputs of nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides, frequency of mechanical weed control practices) and at the landscape scale surrounding the field (i.e. number of crop types, mean field size and proportion of arable land cover within a radius of 500m from the sampling points).</p> <p>3. The effects of agricultural intensification on species and functional richness at the field scale were stronger than those of intensification at the landscape scale, and we did not observe evidence of interacting effects between the two scales. Overall, assemblages in more intensified areas had fewer species, a higher prevalence of species with ruderal strategies (low stature, high leaf area, light seeds), and lower functional redundancy.</p> <p>4. Maintaining the diversity of Europe's arable weed communities requires some simple management interventions, for example, reducing the high intensity of field-level agricultural management across Europe, which could be complemented by interventions that increase landscape complexity.</p>

opencc-zeroDec 2019View details →
dryad36/100

Species identity and diversity effects on invasion resistance of tropical freshwater plant communities

<p>Biotic resistance mediated by native plant diversity has long been hypothesized to reduce the success of invading plant species in terrestrial systems in temperate regions. However, still little is known about the mechanisms driving invasion patterns in other biomes or latitudes. We help to fill this gap by investigating how native plant community presence and diversity, and the presence of native phylogenetically closely related species to an invader, would affect invader <i>Hydrilla verticillata</i> establishment success in tropical freshwater submerged plant communities. The presence of a native community suppressed the growth of <i>H. verticillata</i>, but did not prevent its colonisation. Invader growth was negatively affected by native plant productivity, but independent of native species richness and phylogenetic relatedness to the invader. Native plant production was not related to native species richness in our study. We show that resistance in these tropical aquatic submerged plant communities is mainly driven by the presence and biomass of a native community independent of native species diversity. Our study illustrates that resistance provided by these tropical freshwater submerged plant communities to invasive species contrasts to resistance described for other ecosystems. This emphasizes the need to include understudied systems when predicting patterns of species invasiveness and ecosystem invasibility across biomes.  </p>

opencc-zeroJun 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: Shading enhances plant species richness and diversity on an extensive green roof

<p>Green roofs can promote biodiversity in urban areas. The extent to which green roofs stimulate plant diversity can depend on roof characteristics such as roof age, substrate depth and shading. We exploratively studied the vegetation on a Dutch green roof in 50 permanent plots (1 m<sup>2</sup>) over eight years (2012–2019) following roof construction. Plots were situated either on low substrate depth (6 cm light-weight extensive substrate) or high substrate depth (6 cm light-weight extensive substrate topped with 14 cm native soil) and differed in the amount of shading received from a higher building floor. Increased substrate depth and shading additively increased plant species richness and plant diversity, with high shaded plots supporting on average 6.4 more plant species than low unshaded plots. Shading likely acts via reducing drought stress, whereas increasing substrate depth with native soil may also enhance plant diversity via addition of nutrients and native seeds. The vegetation composition on the roof was dynamic and changed over the years. Sedum acre was initially dominant but disappeared within the first years, whereas Sedum kamtschaticum increased and became dominant in the last years. Trifolium arvense was the most abundant forb species and was especially dominant three years after roof construction. We conclude that increased substrate depth and shading can promote plant species richness and diversity and recommend that both aspects are considered when green roofs are designed. Shading can be achieved by a stepped building architecture and by placing structures on the roof itself, such as solar panels on standards.</p>

opencc-zeroMar 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Spatial mapping of root systems reveals diverse strategies of soil exploration and resource contest in grassland plants

<p>1. When foraging and competing for belowground resources, plants have to coordinate the behaviour of thousands of root tips in a manner similar to that of eusocial animal colonies. While well described in animals, we know little about the spatial behaviour of plants, particularly at the level of individual roots.</p> <p>2. Here, we employed statistical methods previously used to describe animal ranging behaviour to examine root system overlap and the efficiency of root positioning in eight grassland species grown in monocultures and mixtures along a gradient of neighbour densities.</p> <p>3. Species varied widely in their ability to distribute roots efficiently, with the majority of species showing significant root aggregation at very fine spatial scales. Extensive root system overlap was observed in species mixtures, indicating a lack of territoriality at the level of whole root systems. However, with increasing density of competitors, several species withdrew roots from the periphery of foraging ranges and increased intraplant root aggregation in the remaining area, which may indicate consolidation of foraging areas under competitive pressure.</p> <p>4. Several species exhibited responses consistent with resource contest in species mixtures where encounters with competitors' roots triggered increased root aggregation at the expense of foraging efficiency. Such responses only occurred in mixtures of species with comparable competitive abilities but were absent in asymmetric species combinations.</p> <p>5. Synthesis. Combining fine-scale measurement of plant root distributions with spatial statistics yields new insights into plant behavioural strategies with significant potential to impact resource foraging efficiency and productivity.</p>

opencc-zeroOct 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: Multiple facets of diversity effects on plant productivity: species richness, functional diversity, species identity and intraspecific competition

<p>1. Deciphering the mechanisms that drive variation in biomass production across plant communities of contrasting species composition and diversity is a main challenge of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research. Niche complementarity and selection effect have been widely investigated to address biodiversity-productivity relationships. However, the overlooking of the specific role played by key species have limited so far our capacity to comprehensively assess the relative importance of other potential drivers of biodiversity effects.</p> <p>2. Here, we conducted a grassland diversity-productivity experiment to test how four potential facets of biodiversity effects, namely species richness, functional diversity, species identity and the relaxation of intraspecific competition, account for variations in above and root biomass production.</p> <p>3. We grew six plant species in monoculture, as well as in every combinations of two, three and six species. Plant density was kept constant across the richness gradient but we additionally grew each species in half-density monoculture to estimate the strength of intraspecific competition for each studied species. We characterized eight functional traits, including root traits, related to nutrient and light acquisition and computed both the functional dissimilarity and the community weighted mean (CWM) of each trait. We further partitioned aboveground biodiversity effect into complementarity and selection effects.</p> <p>4. We observed strong positive biodiversity effects on both aboveground and root biomass as well as strong positive complementarity effect. These arose largely from the presence of a particular species (<i>Plantago lanceolata</i>) and from CWM trait values more than from a higher functional dissimilarity in plant mixtures. <i>P. lanceolata</i> displayed the highest intraspecific competition, which was strongly relaxed in species mixtures. By contrast, the presence of <i>Sanguisorba minor</i> negatively affected the productivity of plant mixtures, this species suffering more from interspecific than intraspecific competition.</p> <p>5. This study provides strong evidences that the search for key species is critical to understand the role of species diversity on ecosystem functioning and demonstrates the major role that the balance between intraspecific and interspecific competition plays in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships. Developing more integrative approaches in community and ecosystem ecology can offer opportunities to better understand the role that species diversity plays on ecosystem functioning.</p>

opencc-zeroOct 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Ecological data from: Combining botanical collections and ecological data to better describe plant community diversity

<p>In this age of rapid biodiversity loss, we must continue to refine our approaches to describing variation in life on Earth. Combining knowledge and research tools from multiple disciplines is one way to better describe complex natural systems. Understanding plant community diversity requires documenting both pattern and process. We must first know which species exist, and where (i.e., taxonomic and biogeographic patterns), before we can determine why they exist there (i.e., ecological and evolutionary processes). Floristic botanists often use collections-based approaches to elucidate biodiversity patterns, while plant ecologists use hypothesis-driven statistical approaches to describe underlying processes. Because of these different disciplinary histories and research goals, floristic botanists and plant ecologists often remain siloed in their work. Here, using a case study from an urban greenway in Colorado, USA, we illustrate that the collections-based, opportunistic sampling of floristic botanists is highly complementary to the transect- or plot-based sampling of plant ecologists. We found that floristic sampling captured a community species pool four times larger than that captured using ecological transects, with rarefaction and non-parametric species estimation indicating that it would be prohibitive to capture the "true" community species pool if constrained to sampling within transects. We further illustrate that the discrepancy in species pool size between approaches led to a different interpretation of the greenway's ecological condition in some cases (e.g., transects missed uncommon cultivated species escaping from nearby gardens) but not others (e.g., plant species distributions among functional groups were similar between species pools). Finally, we show that while using transects to estimate plant relative abundances necessarily trades off with a fuller assessment of the species pool, it is an indispensable indicator of ecosystem health, as evidenced by three non-native grasses contributing to 50% of plant cover along the highly modified urban greenway. We suggest that actively fostering collaborations between floristic botanists and ecologists can create new insights into the maintenance of species diversity at the community scale.</p>

opencc-zeroNov 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Vegetation cover and plant diversity on cold climate green roofs

<p>Both vegetation abundances and community compositions play important roles for the functions of green roofs (e.g. stormwater retention, habitat provision, aesthetic appearance). However, green roof vegetation can change significantly over time, which may consequently affect the functions related to them. This study investigated vascular plant covers and species compositions on 41 roof sections located in Sweden's subarctic and continental climate zones. For the roof sections with a known originally intended vascular plant composition (n=32), on average 24±9% of the intended species were present in surveys while unintended species made up 69±3% of the the species found. The Intended species dominated plant cover (93±3%) and <i>Sedum acre </i>(58±36% cover) was the most commonly found species. As revealed in previous studies, substrate depth had a positive relationship with plant cover and species richness. The vascular plant cover of the roofs in this study was not related to species richness as hypothesized but instead had a significant negative correlation with moss cover. The results in this study emphasize the importance of substrate depth for both plant abundance and species diversity, and that even in a cold climate, colonising unintended species can have a great contribution to the species richness of green roofs. However, since most colonising species formed sparse cover on the roofs, their potential benefit to green roof functions that benefit from a dense vegetation cover (e.g. stormwater management and thermal performance) could be limited while the intended vegetation performs these functions more effectively.</p>

opencc-zeroDec 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Mangrove diversity enhances plant biomass production and carbon storage in Hainan Island, China

<p>Mangrove forests, one of the highest carbon density ecosystems, are very different from other forests as they occupy saline and tidal habitats. Although previous studies in forests, shrublands, and grasslands have shown a positive effect of biodiversity on plant biomass and carbon storage, it remains unclear whether this relation to biodiversity also exists in mangrove forests. Here, we evaluate the possible effects of mangrove species diversity, structural characteristics, and environmental factors on mangrove biomass production and carbon storage, using survey data from 234 field plots of 30 transects in the mangrove forests along the coastlines of Hainan Island, China, during 2017 and 2018.We found that mangrove species diversity had a positive effect, not only on mangrove biomass production, but also on soil carbon storage. This positive effect was more strongly evident in the forest communities than in either the shrub communities or forest-shrub mixed communities, with the forests type having the biggest mangrove biodiversity and carbon storage. In addition, the diversity effect was affected by structural characteristics, namely, mangrove biomass increased exponentially with tree stem diameter and decreased with tree density. Furthermore, we observed a resource-dependent mediation of the mangrove ecosystem when linking diversity to biomass. The areas with high soil Nitrogen content and Mean annul precipitation (MAP) showed higher mangrove biomass and carbon storage. This suggests that the spatial pattern of mangrove carbon storage and diversity was driven by both climate factors (MAP) and soil fertility (soil N).Our findings suggest that mangrove forests with greater diversity also have higher carbon storage capacities and conservation potential. Thus, biodiversity conservation is crucial for mangrove to mitigate the greenhouse effect. Our findings strengthen the understanding of the diversity effects on mangrove ecosystem services and have important implications for mangrove restoration and conservation.</p>

opencc-zeroJan 2021View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: Soil heterogeneity increases plant diversity after twenty years of manipulation during grassland restoration

The 'environmental heterogeneity hypothesis' predicts that variability in resources promotes species coexistence, but few experiments support this hypothesis in plant communities. A previous 15-y test of this hypothesis in a prairie restoration experiment demonstrated a weak effect of manipulated soil resource heterogeneity on plant diversity. This response was attributed to a transient increase in richness following a post-restoration supplemental propagule addition, occasionally higher diversity under nutrient enrichment, and reduced cover of a dominant species in a subset of soil treatments. Here, we report community dynamics under continuous propagule addition in the same experiment, corresponding to 16-20 y of restoration, in response to altered availability and heterogeneity of soil resources. We also quantified traits of newly added species to determine if heterogeneity increases the amount and variety of niches available for new species to exploit. The heterogeneous treatment contained a factorial combination of altered nutrient availability and soil depth; control plots had no manipulations. Total diversity and richness were higher in the heterogeneous treatment during this 5 y study due to higher cover, diversity, and richness of previously established forbs, particularly in the N-enriched subplots. All new species added to the experiment exhibited unique trait spaces, but there was no evidence that heterogeneous plots contained a greater variety of new species representing a wider range of trait spaces relative to the control treatment. The richness and cover of new species was higher in N-enriched soil, but the magnitude of this response was small. Communities assembling under long-term N addition were dominated by different species among subplots receiving added N, leading to greater dispersion of communities among the heterogeneous relative to control plots. Contrary to the deterministic mechanism by which heterogeneity was expected to increase diversity (greater variability in resources for new species to exploit), higher diversity in the heterogeneous plots resulted from destabilization of formerly grass-dominated communities in N-enriched subplots. While we do not advocate increasing available soil N at large scales, we conclude that the positive effect of environmental heterogeneity on diversity can take decades to materialize and depend on development of stochastic processes in communities with strong establishment limitation.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →
dryad36/100

Configurational crop heterogeneity increases within-field plant diversity

<p>1. Increasing landscape heterogeneity by restoring semi-natural elements to reverse farmland biodiversity declines is not always economically feasible or acceptable to farmers due to competition for land. We hypothesized that increasing the heterogeneity of the crop mosaic itself, hereafter referred to as crop heterogeneity, can have beneficial effects on within-field plant diversity.</p> <p>2. Using a unique multi-country dataset from a cross-continent collaborative project covering 1451 agricultural fields within 432 landscapes in Europe and Canada, we assessed the relative effects of compositional and configurational crop heterogeneity on within-field plant diversity components. We also examined how these relationships were modulated by the position within the field.</p> <p>3. We found strong positive effects of configurational crop heterogeneity on within-field plant alpha and gamma diversity in field interiors. These effects were as high as the effect of semi-natural cover. In field borders, effects of crop heterogeneity were limited to alpha diversity. We suggest that a heterogeneous crop mosaic may overcome the high negative impact of management practices on plant diversity in field interiors, whereas in field borders, where plant diversity is already high, landscape effects are more limited.</p> <p>4. <em>Synthesis and applications</em>. Our study shows that increasing configurational crop heterogeneity is beneficial to within-field plant diversity. It opens up a new effective and complementary way to promote farmland biodiversity without taking land out of agricultural production. We therefore recommend adopting manipulation of crop heterogeneity as a specific, effective management option in future policy measures, perhaps adding to agri-environment schemes, to contribute to the conservation of farmland plant diversity.</p>

opencc-zeroJan 2020View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: Food webs obscure the strength of plant diversity effects on primary productivity

Plant diversity experiments generally find that increased diversity causes increased productivity; however, primary productivity is typically measured in the presence of a diverse food web, including pathogens, mutualists and herbivores. If food web impacts on productivity vary with plant diversity, as predicted by both theoretical and empirical studies, estimates of the effect of plant diversity on productivity may be biased. We experimentally removed arthropods, foliar fungi and soil fungi from the longest-running plant diversity experiment. We found that fungi and arthropods removed a constant, large proportion of biomass leading to a greater reduction of total biomass in high diversity plots. As a result, the effect of diversity on measured plant productivity was much higher in the absence of fungi and arthropods. Thus, diversity increases productivity more than reported in previous studies that did not control for the effects of heterotrophic consumption.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: Herbivores safeguard plant diversity by reducing variability in dominance

1. Reductions in community evenness can lead to local extinctions as dominant species exclude subordinate species; however, herbivores can prevent competitive exclusion by consuming otherwise dominant plant species, thus increasing evenness. While these predictions logically result from chronic, gradual reductions in evenness, rapid, temporary pulses of dominance may also reduce species richness. Short pulses of dominance can occur as biotic or abiotic conditions temporarily favor one or a few species, manifested as increased temporal variability (the inverse of temporal stability) in community evenness. Here, we tested whether consumers help maintain plant diversity by reducing the temporal variability in community evenness. 2. We tested our hypothesis by reducing herbivore abundance in a detailed study of a developing, tallgrass prairie restoration. To assess the broader implications of the importance of herbivory on community evenness as well as potential mechanisms, we paired this study with a global herbivore-reduction experiment. 3. We found that herbivores maintained plant richness in a tallgrass prairie restoration by limiting temporary pulses in dominance by a single species. Dominance by an annual species in a single year was negatively associated with species richness, suggesting that short pulses of dominance may be sufficient to exclude subordinate species. 4. The generality of this site-level relationship was supported by the global experiment in which inter-annual variability in evenness declined in the presence of vertebrate herbivores over timeframes ranging in length from 2-5 years, preventing declines in species richness. Furthermore, inter-annual variability of community evenness was also negatively associated with pre-treatment species richness. 5. Synthesis: A loss or reduction of herbivores can destabilize plant communities by allowing brief periods of dominance by one or a few species, potentially triggering a feedback cycle of dominance and extinction. Such cycles may not occur immediately following the loss of herbivores, being delayed until conditions allow temporary periods of dominance by a subset of plant species.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: The edaphic control of plant diversity

<p>BACKGROUND: The central thesis of plant ecology is that climate determines the distribution of global vegetation. Within a vegetation type, however, finer-scale environmental features such as the physical and chemical properties of soil (edaphic variation) control plant distributions and diversity patterns.<br> <br> AIMS: Here, we review the literature to provide a mechanistic framework for the edaphic control of plant diversity. First, we review three examples where soils have known, prevalent effects on plant diversity: during soil formation, on unusual soils, and in regions with high edaphic heterogeneity. Second, we synthesize how edaphic factors mediate the relative importance of the four key processes of community assembly (speciation, ecological drift, dispersal, and niche selection). Third, we review the potential effects of climate change in edaphically heterogeneous regions. Finally, we outline key knowledge gaps for understanding the edaphic control of plant diversity. In our review, we emphasize floras of unusual edaphic areas (i.e., serpentine, limestone, granite), as these areas disproportionately contribute to the world's biodiversity hotspots.<br> <br> TAXA: Terrestrial plants<br> <br> LOCATION: Global<br> <br> CONCLUSION: Edaphic variation is a key driver of biodiversity patterns and influences the relative importance of speciation, dispersal, ecological drift, niche selection, and interactions among these processes. Research is still needed to better understand the underlying mechanisms by which edaphic variation influences these community assembly processes, and unusual soils provide excellent natural systems for such tests. Furthermore, incorporating edaphic variation into climate change research will help increase the predictive power of species distribution models, help identify potential climate refugia, and help identify species with adaptations that buffer them from climate change.</p>

opencc-zeroJun 2021View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: Ecosystem context illuminates conflicting roles of plant diversity in carbon storage

Plant diversity can increase biomass production in plot‐scale studies, but applying these results to ecosystem carbon (C) storage at larger spatial and temporal scales remains problematic. Other ecosystem controls interact with diversity and plant production, and may influence soil pools differently from plant pools. We integrated diversity with the state‐factor framework, which identifies key controls, or 'state factors', over ecosystem properties and services such as C storage. We used this framework to assess the effects of diversity, plant traits and state factors (climate, topography, time) on live tree, standing dead, organic horizon and total C in Québec forests. Four patterns emerged: (1) while state factors were usually the most important model predictors, models with both state and biotic factors (mean plant traits and diversity) better predicted C pools; (2) mean plant traits were better predictors than diversity; (3) diversity increased live tree C but reduced organic horizon C; (4) different C pools responded to different traits and diversity metrics. These results suggest that, where ecosystem properties result from multiple processes, no simple relationship may exist with any one organismal factor. Integrating biodiversity into ecosystem ecology and assessing both traits and diversity improves our mechanistic understanding of biotic effects on ecosystems.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →
dryad36/100

Data from: Temperature shapes opposing latitudinal gradients of plant taxonomic and phylogenetic β diversity

Latitudinal and elevational richness gradients have received much attention from ecologists but there is little consensus on underlying causes. One possible proximate cause is increased levels of species turnover, or β diversity, in the tropics compared to temperate regions. Here, we leverage a large botanical dataset to map taxonomic and phylogenetic β diversity, as mean turnover between neighboring 100 × 100 km cells, across the Americas and determine key climatic drivers. We find taxonomic and tip‐weighted phylogenetic β diversity is higher in the tropics, but that basal‐weighted phylogenetic β diversity is highest in temperate regions. Supporting Janzen's 'mountain passes' hypothesis, tropical mountainous regions had higher β diversity than temperate regions for taxonomic and tip‐weighted metrics. The strongest climatic predictors of turnover were average temperature and temperature seasonality. Taken together, these results suggest β diversity is coupled to latitudinal richness gradients and that temperature is a major driver of plant community composition and change.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

ScienceDex guides

Understand access before you commit

These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.

Compare curated datasets

Allen Brain Atlas

Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.

allen-brain-atlas
neuroscienceopenDocumentation, web resources, and API references are available online.
Last verified 2026-04-30Open record

Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)

ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.

abode-home-cage
behavioral-neuroscienceopenThe DataShare record exposes download links for annotations, documentation, license text, and the zipped per-snippet data directory.
Last verified 2026-04-30Open record

DANDI Archive for NWB datasets

DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.

dandi-nwb
electrophysiologyopenPublished Dandiset metadata and archive endpoints are available through the production DANDI API.
Last verified 2026-04-30Open record

International Brain Laboratory public data

The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.

ibl
behavioral-neuroscienceopenPublic sessions can be searched and loaded from the IBL public data server through ONE.
Last verified 2026-04-29Open record

OpenNeuro

OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.

openneuro
neuroscienceopenPublished datasets are available on demand over the internet.
Last verified 2026-04-29Open record