Plant belowground organs perform essential functions, including water and nutrient uptake, anchorage, vegetative reproduction and recruitment of mutualistic soil microbiota. Recently, multivariate analyses showed that root traits of species can largely be linked to a ‘conservation’ and a ‘collaboration’ gradient. Here, we tested whether this species-level bidimensional belowground trait space also exists at the community level in grasslands. Furthermore, we tested whether the position of grassland communities in belowground trait space relates to environmental variables....

This dataset contains data on the cultivated alien and native flora of Southern Africa associated with data on geographic origins, growth form, functional traits, and naturalization status extracted from different data sources described in Omer, A. et al. 2021. Characteristics of the naturalized flora of Southern Africa largely reflect the non-random introduction of alien species for cultivation– Ecography. doi: 10.1111/ecog.05669. It is frequently overlooked, however, that patterns in origin, phylogeny, and traits of naturalized alien...