Food webs represent one of the most complex aspects of community biotic interactions. Complex food webs are represented as networks of interspecific interactions, where nodes represent species or groups of species, and links are predator-prey interactions. This paper presents reconstructions of coral reef food webs in three Greater Antillean regions of the Caribbean: the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica. Though not taxonomically comprehensive, each food web nevertheless comprises producers and consumers, single-celled and multicellular organisms, and species foraging on reefs and adjacent seagrass beds. Species are grouped into trophic guilds if their prey and predator links are indistinguishable. The data list guilds, taxonomic composition, prey guilds/species, and predators. Primary producer and invertebrate richness are regionally uniform, but vertebrate richness varies on the basis of more detailed occurrence data. Each region comprises 169 primary producers, 513 protistan and invertebrate consumer species, and 159, 178, and 170 vertebrate species in the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica, respectively. Caribbean coral reefs are among the world's most endangered by anthropogenic activities. The datasets presented here will facilitate comparisons of historical and regional variation, the assessment of impacts of species loss and invasion, and the application of food webs to ecosystem analyses.
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Trophic data for the Cayman Islands. Data specify trophic guilds, the number of prey per guild, a list of those prey guilds, and the major foraging habitat of the guild. In the first column is given the Guild Number. Guild numbers are standard among all the datasets; for example, guild number 1 represents planktonic bacteria in the Cayman, Cuban, and Jamaican datasets. In the second column (Guild Description) is given the common language guild descriptions. The descriptions indicate the major trophic niche of the guild in the case of multispecies guilds (e.g., Macroplanktonic carnivores I), the major taxon of the guild (e.g., Eucidaris), or in the case of vertebrates, a common name of the species (e.g., scorpionfish). In the third column (Foraging Habitat) is given the major foraging habitat of vertebrate guild members. In this column, r means reef; rg, reef and seagrass beds; and g, seagrass beds. In the fourth column (Number of Prey) is given the total number of guilds that contain species that are preyed upon by the guild in question. In the fifth column (Prey) is given a list of prey guilds. Missing data are indicated by a period (.).Column 1: Guild Number Column 2: Guild Description Column 3: Foraging Habitat Column 4: Number of Prey Column 5: Prey
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Trophic data for Cuba. Data specify trophic guilds, the number of prey per guild, a list of those prey guilds, and the major foraging habitat of the guild. In the first column is given the Guild Number. Guild numbers are standard among all the datasets; for example, guild number 1 represents planktonic bacteria in the Cayman, Cuban, and Jamaican datasets. In the second column (Guild Description) is given the common language guild descriptions. The descriptions indicate the major trophic niche of the guild in the case of multispecies guilds (e.g., Macroplanktonic carnivores I), the major taxon of the guild (e.g., Eucidaris), or in the case of vertebrates, a common name of the species (e.g., scorpionfish). In the third column (Foraging Habitat) is given the major foraging habitat of vertebrate guild members. In this column, r means reef; rg, reef and seagrass beds; and g, seagrass beds. In the fourth column (Number of Prey) is given the total number of guilds that contain species that are preyed upon by the guild in question. In the fifth column (Prey) is given a list of prey guilds. Missing data are indicated by a period (.).
857470.item.3
Trophic data for Jamaica. Data specify trophic guilds, the number of prey per guild, a list of those prey guilds, and the major foraging habitat of the guild. In the first column is given the Guild Number. Guild numbers are standard among all the datasets; for example, guild number 1 represents planktonic bacteria in the Cayman, Cuban, and Jamaican datasets. In the second column (Guild Description) is given the common language guild descriptions. The descriptions indicate the major trophic niche of the guild in the case of multispecies guilds (e.g., Macroplanktonic carnivores I), the major taxon of the guild (e.g., Eucidaris), or in the case of vertebrates, a common name of the species (e.g., scorpionfish). In the third column (Foraging Habitat) is given the major foraging habitat of vertebrate guild members. In this column, r means reef; rg, reef and seagrass beds; and g, seagrass beds. In the fourth column (Number of Prey) is given the total number of guilds that contain species that are preyed upon by the guild in question. In the fifth column (Prey) is given a list of prey guilds. Missing data are indicated by a period (.).
Column 1: Guild Number
Column 2: Guild Description
Column 3: Foraging Habitat
Column 4: Number of Prey
Column 5: Prey
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Guild key. This is a list of all guilds present in Dataset Items 1–3 (Tables) and the taxa assigned to those guilds. There is a total of 265 guilds, though none of the regions described contains all those guilds. There are also several guilds or species that are absent from all the regions, but have nevertheless been recorded in the northern Caribbean region, and are likely to be present in undescribed refuges or occasional members of the regions, for example, the tiger shark Galeocerdo cuvieri. In the first column is given the Guild Number; in the second (Taxa), the taxa assigned to guild; in the third (Fish Body Length), the average body size (fork length, cm) of bony and cartilaginous fish species. Maximum body size is recorded if average size is not available. Missing data are indicated by a period (.). In columns 4–6 is shown the presence of vertebrate species in the Cayman Islands, Cuba, or Jamaica indicated by “x” sign.
Column 1: Guild Number
Column 2: Taxa
Column 3: Fish Body Length (cm)
Column 4: Cayman Islands
Column 5: Cuba
Column 6: Jamaica
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Binary adjacency matrix of the Cayman Islands food web. Rows are predatory guilds and columns are prey. The th element of the matrix is 1 if guild preys upon species in guild , and 0 otherwise. Note that the matrices are therefore asymmetric about the diagonal, and that there are 265 rows representing each guild in the dataset. Taxa that are missing from the food web, for example, the tiger shark Galeocerdo cuvieri, are included as disconnected nodes, that is, rows and columns comprising zero elements only. This is for consistency with future datasets of related regions in which the species might be present.
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Binary adjacency matrix of the Cuban food web. Rows are predatory guilds and columns are prey. The th element of the matrix is 1 if guild preys upon species in guild , and 0 otherwise. Note that the matrices are therefore asymmetric about the diagonal and that there are 265 rows representing each guild in the dataset. Taxa that are missing from the food web, for example, the tiger shark Galeocerdo cuvieri, are included as disconnected nodes, that is, rows and columns comprising zero elements only. This is for consistency with future datasets of related regions in which the species might be present.
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Binary adjacency matrix of the Jamaican food web. Rows are predatory guilds and columns are prey. The th element of the matrix is 1 if guild preys upon species in guild , and 0 otherwise. Note that the matrices are therefore asymmetric about the diagonal and that there are 265 rows representing each guild in the dataset. Taxa that are missing from the food web, for example, the tiger shark Galeocerdo cuvieri, are included as disconnected nodes, that is, rows and columns comprising zero elements only. This is for consistency with future datasets of related regions in which the species might be present.