Morphometric measurements of 300 spores from six Lycopodiaceae taxa collected from Bialowieża Primeval Forest Ecosystem
Description
The dataset was assembled to test the hypothesis that quantitative spore morphology differs among six commonly studied Lycopodiaceae taxa—Huperzia selago, Lycopodium clavatum, L. annotinum, Diphasiastrum complanatum, D. tristachyum and D. alpinum—and that these differences may correlate with the contrasting habitats in which the parent sporophytes grow. For each of 300 visually undamaged spores (exactly 50 per species) ten two-dimensional morphometric variables are reported: projected area, outline perimeter, maximum and minimum Feret diameters (interpreted respectively as the polar and equatorial axes), horizontal and vertical Feret diameters, the x- and y-coordinates of the outline centroid within the calibrated image frame, the diameter of the smallest enclosing circle (sieve diameter) and the diameter of a circle of equal area (equivalent diameter). All measurements are expressed in micrometres (µm or µm²) and were obtained with the same pixel-to-distance calibration, permitting direct comparison across the full sample. Species abbreviations: Huperzia selago — H.s. Lycopodium clavatum — L.c. Lycopodium annotinum — L.a. Diphasiastrum complanatum — D.c. Diphasiastrum tristachyum — D.t. Diphasiastrum alpinum — D.a.