Co-mast: Harmonized seed production data for woody plants across US long-term research sites

Katherine M Nigro; Jessica H Barton; Diana Macias; V Bala Chaudhary; Ian S Pearse; David M Bell; Angel Chen; Natalie L Cleavitt; Elizabeth E Crone; David F Greene; E Penelope Holland; Jill F Johnstone; Walter D Koenig; Nicholas J Lyon; Tom E X Miller; Mark Schulze; Rebecca S Snell; Jess K Zimmerman; Johannes M H Knops; Stacy McNulty; Robert R Parmenter; Mark A Winterstein; Roman I Zlotin; Jalene M LaMontagne; Miranda D Redmond

doi:10.1002/ecy.4463

Co-mast: Harmonized seed production data for woody plants across US long-term research sites

Ecology. 2024 Dec 12:e4463. doi: 10.1002/ecy.4463. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Katherine M Nigro¹, Jessica H Barton², Diana Macias³, V Bala Chaudhary⁴, Ian S Pearse⁵, David M Bell⁶, Angel Chen⁷, Natalie L Cleavitt⁸, Elizabeth E Crone⁹, David F Greene¹⁰, E Penelope Holland¹¹, Jill F Johnstone¹², Walter D Koenig¹³, Nicholas J Lyon⁷, Tom E X Miller¹⁴, Mark Schulze¹⁵, Rebecca S Snell¹⁶, Jess K Zimmerman¹⁷, Johannes M H Knops¹⁸, Stacy McNulty¹⁹, Robert R Parmenter²⁰, Mark A Winterstein¹², Roman I Zlotin²¹, Jalene M LaMontagne^{2

22

23}, Miranda D Redmond³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
² Department of Biology, University of Missouri - St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
³ Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA.
⁴ Environmental Studies Department, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.
⁵ U.S. Geological Survey, Fort Collins Science Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
⁶ Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Corvallis, Oregon, USA.
⁷ Long Term Ecological Research Network Office, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA.
⁸ Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
⁹ Department of Evolution & Ecology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Forestry, Fire, and Range Management, Cal Poly Humboldt, Arcata, California, USA.
¹¹ Department of Biology, University of York, York, UK.
¹² Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.
¹³ Hastings Reservation, University of California Berkeley, Carmel Valley, California, USA.
¹⁴ Department of BioSciences, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA.
¹⁵ H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Blue River, Oregon, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Environmental and Plant Biology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA.
¹⁸ Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.
¹⁹ Adirondack Ecological Center, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Newcomb, New York, USA.
²⁰ Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
²¹ Department of Geography, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.
²² Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center, University of Missouri - St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
²³ Science and Conservation Division, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

PMID: 39665135
DOI: 10.1002/ecy.4463

Abstract

Plants display a range of temporal patterns of inter-annual reproduction, from relatively constant seed production to "mast seeding," the synchronized and highly variable interannual seed production of plants within a population. Previous efforts have compiled global records of seed production in long-lived plants to gain insight into seed production, forest and animal population dynamics, and the effects of global change on masting. Existing datasets focus on seed production dynamics at the population scale but are limited in their ability to examine community-level mast seeding dynamics across different plant species at the continental scale. We harmonized decades of plant reproduction data for 141 woody plant species across nine Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) or long-term ecological monitoring sites from a wide range of habitats across the United States. Plant reproduction data are reported annually between 1957 and 2021 and based on either seed traps or seed and/or cone counts on individual trees. A wide range of woody plant species including trees, shrubs, and lianas are represented within sites allowing for direct community-level comparisons among species. We share code for filtering of data that enables the comparison of plot and individual tree data across sites. For each species, we compiled relevant life history attributes (e.g., seed mass, dispersal syndrome, seed longevity, sexual system) that may serve as important predictors of mast seeding in future analyses. To aid in phylogenetically informed analyses, we also share a phylogeny and phylogenetic distance matrix for all species in the dataset. These data can be used to investigate continent-scale ecological properties of seed production, including individual and population variability, synchrony within and across species, and how these properties of seed production vary in relation to plant species traits and environmental conditions. In addition, these data can be used to assess how annual variability in seed production is associated with climate conditions and how that varies across populations, species, and regions. The dataset is released under a CC0 1.0 Universal public domain license.

Keywords: LTER; USA; community dynamics; long‐term data; mast fruiting; mast seeding; masting; plant reproduction; plant traits; synchronous reproduction.

Abstract

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