Dryad
Published October 22, 2014 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Data from: Three keys to the radiation of angiosperms into freezing environments

Authors/Creators

  • 1. University of Washington
  • 2. University of Idaho
  • 3. Department of Ecological Sciences, Systems Ecology, de Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands,*
  • 4. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
  • 5. University of British Columbia
  • 6. Utah State University
  • 7. University of Tennessee at Knoxville
  • 8. Environmental Earth Sciences
  • 9. University of Minnesota
  • 10. Wesleyan University
  • 11. University of Florida
  • 12. University of Missouri–St. Louis
  • 13. Macquarie University
  • 14. Queen's University
  • 15. College of the Holy Cross
  • 16. Royal Botanic Gardens
  • 17. Florida Museum of Natural History
  • 18. Department of Plant Biology
  • 19. National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis

Description

Early flowering plants are thought to have been woody species restricted to warm habitats1, 2, 3. This lineage has since radiated into almost every climate, with manifold growth forms4. As angiosperms spread and climate changed, they evolved mechanisms to cope with episodic freezing. To explore the evolution of traits underpinning the ability to persist in freezing conditions, we assembled a large species-level database of growth habit (woody or herbaceous; 49,064 species), as well as leaf phenology (evergreen or deciduous), diameter of hydraulic conduits (that is, xylem vessels and tracheids) and climate occupancies (exposure to freezing). To model the evolution of species' traits and climate occupancies, we combined these data with an unparalleled dated molecular phylogeny (32,223 species) for land plants. Here we show that woody clades successfully moved into freezing-prone environments by either possessing transport networks of small safe conduits5 and/or shutting down hydraulic function by dropping leaves during freezing. Herbaceous species largely avoided freezing periods by senescing cheaply constructed aboveground tissue. Growth habit has long been considered labile6, but we find that growth habit was less labile than climate occupancy. Additionally, freezing environments were largely filled by lineages that had already become herbs or, when remaining woody, already had small conduits (that is, the trait evolved before the climate occupancy). By contrast, most deciduous woody lineages had an evolutionary shift to seasonally shedding their leaves only after exposure to freezing (that is, the climate occupancy evolved before the trait). For angiosperms to inhabit novel cold environments they had to gain new structural and functional trait solutions; our results suggest that many of these solutions were probably acquired before their foray into the cold.

Notes

Taxonomic lookup table containing clade-level mappings for 15,363 genera of Spermatophyta.
Spermatophyta_Genera.csv
Global Woodiness Database
GlobalWoodinessDatabase.csv
Phylogenetic Resources
This archive contains datasets and resulting trees for maximum likelihood phylogeny reconstruction and time-scaling.
PhylogeneticResources.zip
Global Plant Species Freezing Exposure Database
This collection of files documents the processing of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) geographic data and the WorldClim Bioclim data to produce a species freezing exposure datafile which is also included.
climate.zip
Global Leaf Phenology Database
GlobalLeafPhenologyDatabase.csv

Files

climate.zip

Files (84.5 MB)

Name Size Download all
md5:d19b9f66a3577d63d46459388ec67b90
282.1 kB Preview Download
md5:d993f7c6d53ada134b934f6fa3347dfa
148.4 kB Preview Download
md5:a0f069d45494b34c44adc446ebf93585
1.4 MB Preview Download
md5:750d60ea0155bd4637b9e5985ebdd528
79.5 MB Preview Download
md5:de26926007385b41edca3d109b268709
4.3 kB Preview Download
md5:b9b3f091ae28a02c97463fd50b84884c
1.3 kB Preview Download
md5:68454de10c6788cfde9b72a37aff422f
2.3 kB Preview Download
md5:bec38d4599cec7d562a222751e44e556
5.3 kB Preview Download
md5:5cc5bb1a8960d75677633b1988e39cfa
1.0 kB Preview Download
md5:f07989b4b16c6fa505767c824b0aff9f
3.2 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Related works

Is cited by
10.1038/nature12872 (DOI)