3. Data sampling:
3.1 Sampled taxa
We sampled diaspores of Central European species kept in the seed
collection of the Chair of Ecology and Conservation Biology at the
University of Regensburg, Germany, started and curated by Prof. Peter
Poschlod. In total, our dataset included 1,437 taxa (including species,
lower ranks, and three sections), belonging to 513 genera, 96 plant
families, making up a total of 94,214 diaspores. (See Taxonomic
data section for information on nomenclature verification). The most
represented families in the database are Asteraceae (191 taxa; 65
genera), Poaceae (113; 48), Brassicaceae (93; 43), Cyperaceae (85; 11),
and Fabaceae (80; 22), with ~39% of all reported
species.
3.2 Recorded appendages
For each species, we recorded diaspore structures and appendages (Table
1) following a modified version of seed structure categories in LEDA
Trait standards (Römermann et al. 2005, Kleyer et al. 2008). As the LEDA
is a database focused on functional traits, the modifications aimed to
improve the objectivity of the classification and facilitate the
recognition of morphological structures for identification purposes. For
each taxon, appendages and structures were classified as present (1) or
absent (0). In some instances, diaspores of species and genera were
found with and without appendages and structures; for these cases, we
recorded the structures as present and later specified them as missing
from the image (see Section 3.3).
Table 1. Summary of the diaspore appendage and structure
categories.