Decline in diversity of tropical soil fauna under experimental warming
Data files
Oct 31, 2024 version files 368.59 KB
-
raw_data.csv
366.68 KB
-
README.md
1.91 KB
Abstract
Climate change is exacerbating a global decline in biodiversity. Numerous observational studies link rising temperatures to declining biological abundance, richness, and diversity in terrestrial ecosystems, yet few studies have considered the highly diverse and functionally significant communities of tropical forest soil and leaf litter fauna. Here, we report major declines in the order-level richness and diversity of soil and leaf litter fauna following three years of experimental whole-profile soil warming in a tropical forest. This decline was greatest during the dry season, suggesting that warming effects could be exacerbated by drought. Contrary to findings from higher latitudes, total faunal abundance increased under warming, with major shifts in community composition. These responses were driven by increased dominance of a relatively small number of thermophilic taxa, and of oribatid mites in particular. Our study provides direct experimental evidence that warming causes diversity declines and compositional shifts for tropical forest soil and leaf litter fauna, a result with potential consequences for soil carbon cycling and which highlights the vulnerability of tropical biodiversity to climate change.
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xksn02vrd
Description of the data and file structure
Raw data for Szczygieł et al. 2024 ‘Decline in diversity of tropical soil fauna under experimental warming’ Proceedings B
We used this raw data with the vegan package in R, among others, to calculate and visualize abundance, richness, diversity, and community composition data.
Explanation of the columns:
- Taxon: a set of all possible taxa that can be extracted via Tullgren funnels at our site, mostly at Order level, for each sample/date combination.
- Date: the date that the sample was collected
- Season: the season the sample was collected (wet or dry)
- Plot Type: treatment type of the plot where the sample was collected. W = warmed, C = control
- Sample: sample identifier for each sampling date. The number corresponds to the SWELTR plot where the sample was collected, the letter corresponds to the sample type (S = soil, L = leaf-litter)
- Sample Type: the material placed in the Tullgren funnels for extraction - Soil or Litter
- Wet Mass (g): mass of the sample in grams as collected in the field and placed in the Tullgren funnel.
- Avg. Soil moisture (%): moisture value collected with a Delta Thetaprobe soil moisture meter.
- Calc. dry mass (g): calculated hypothetical dry mass in grams based on the wet mass and soil moisture.
- Avg. Temp (degrees C): average soil or litter temperature in degrees C of the three subsamples that constitute each sample collected.
- Count: number of individuals observed for a particular taxon in a particular sample collected at the indicated date
No data is available for all cells that contain ‘NA’.
Access information
Other publicly accessible locations of the data:
- n/a
Data was derived from the following sources:
- n/a