C. Data set description
The present dataset contains images and records of quantitative morphological traits for 94,214 diaspores from 1,437 taxa (including species, lower ranks, and three sections) in 513 genera, and 96 families from Central Europe kept in the seed collection of the Chair of Ecology and Conservation Biology at the University of Regensburg, Germany. 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 (Figure 1). Images from diaspores were obtained with a flatbed scanner in a high-contrast background and pre-processed for colour standardization; quantitative morphological traits were extracted from the images (Dayrell et al. 2023). The morphological traits include: 1) morphometric measurements (length, width, area, perimeter, aspect ratio, circularity, surface structure, and solidity); 2) colour measurements for human recognition purposes (Figure 2; mean, median, and most dominant colours in sRGB), and ecological and evolutionary studies (independent of any particular animal visual system; linear sRGB); 3) standardized contour of diaspores (50 coordinates for each seed) for shape analysis methods. Diaspores of the evaluated taxa were classified according to the presence and absence of appendages and structures (e.g., fleshy structures, elongated appendages, surface hairs).