Scale-dependent stoichiometric buffering reveals the potential and limits of foliar C:N:P indicators in the halophyte Salicornia europaea

Description

This dataset supports an evaluation of foliar C:N:P stoichiometric traits as ecological indicators in the obligate halophyte Salicornia europaea. Leaf and paired rhizosphere-soil samples were collected from 216 individuals across 18 natural populations in saline China, running from the Yellow Sea coast of Jiangsu at 32.78 °N to the Junggar Basin margin in northern Xinjiang at 47.23 °N, a span of 14.46° of latitude and 36.3° of longitude, with altitudes from 4 to 1887 m. Measured variables comprise leaf and soil carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations, soil pH and soil salinity, with site coordinates and altitude. Carbon was determined by K₂Cr₂O₇-H₂SO₄ digestion with dichromate oxidation and titration, nitrogen by Kjeldahl distillation after H₂SO₄-HClO₄ digestion, and phosphorus from the same digest by the molybdenum-blue method. Soil pH was measured with a glass electrode in a 1:5 soil-to-water suspension and salinity gravimetrically as total dissolved solids. The deposit contains the raw plant-soil dataset, derived per-population results, the full statistical analysis workbook, and the Python scripts reproducing every analysis and figure. Analyses assess six candidate foliar indicators through relative buffering, multilevel within- and between-population coupling with population-block bootstrapping, population-specific homeostasis, within-population stability, and environmental attribution by redundancy analysis with three-block variance partitioning.

Steps to reproduce

All analyses were run in Python 3.13 with pandas, NumPy, SciPy, statsmodels, scikit-learn and matplotlib. Place all files in a single working directory and run the scripts from that directory; each script reads the raw workbook directly and writes its own outputs, so the full result set regenerates from an empty output folder. Run the main statistical analysis script first, then the per-population script, then the figure scripts, which are named by figure number.

Institutions

• Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography

  Xinjiang, Ürümqi

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