Animal metacommunities of temporary ponds in a flat grassland landscape of Uruguay
Data files
May 29, 2024 version files 2.11 MB
Abstract
The database comprises a survey of an animal metacommunity of temporary ponds carried out in October 2008, in a grassland landscape of Uruguay. The animal groups involve macroinvertebrates, fishes, and amphibians. Individual occurrence, taxonomic affiliation, and traits associated with diet and body size are provided. The metacommunity is located in a flat landscape surrounded by hills, where a maximum of 61 ponds, every year, are filled with water in winter and dry out in summer in the same spatial locations. Information on species and morphospecies abundances at the sampling unit level was recorded in 18 ponds, the number of ponds that were active (i.e., with water) at the sampling date. These ponds are part of the metacommunity for which plants have been sampled every year since 2005 in all ponds and for which environmental information was also compiled—data available in this same Dryad entry. Further surveys are being processed and will be available in the future. Data are provided for promoting the advancement of metacommunity theory, corroborating published studies, and generating novel ones. We are incorporating all the available information about the studied metacommunity that now comprises 20 years of continuous monitoring. The database includes animal species and morphospecies abundances at the sampling unit level for 18 temporary ponds sampled in October 2008. The species traits related to body sizes (measured for each individual) and trophic guild (obtained from literature) are presented together with the individual taxonomy. Note that species Order or family can also be used as a proxy of many conserved attributes like life history, resistance strategy, dispersal mode, or vulnerability to predators.
README: Animal metacommunities of temporary ponds in a flat grassland landscape of Uruguay
Database of the animal metacommunity associated with 18 temporary ponds of a total of 61 detected in a flat grassland landscape of Uruguay limited by hills and rivers. The sampling was performed in October 2008. The plant communities associated with these ponds have survived each year since 2005. Environmental information is available elsewhere in this Dryad repository.
Description of the data and file structure
The database comprises a total of 6784 animal individuals, with the collection date, classified in order, family, genus, and species (or morphospecies), measured (height, width, length, and estimated biovolume), trophic guild (Carnivorous, omnivorous, herbivorous, detritivorous, filters), microhabitat stratum (Aquatic, terrestrial epigeum, and terrestrial hypogeum), and associated to sampling unit and pond (18 ponds in total). The references used for the taxonomic classification and guild category are also indicated. The number of sampling units was proportional to the size of ponds, which cover 5 orders of magnitude in area. Sampling details are explained elsewhere for other databases of the same system reported in this Dryad record.
In this database, each row represents an individual sampled.
The 19 columns indicate:
the sampling date (Date), the sample pond (Pond), the sampling unit with the pond (Sampling_unit), the large taxonomic group (Taxonomic_group), if the individual is aquatic or terrestrial discerning between terrestrial epigeum or hypogeum (Aquatic/Terrestiral_epigeum/Terrestiral_hypogeum), the individual taxonomic, order, family, genus, and species (Order, Family, Genus, and Epithet respectively in columns names), the species name (Specie). The next columns inform about the species' functional traits. The trophic functional group (Trophic_Guild), literature used for classifying individuals to trophic guilds (Reference), body size dimensions (Length, Width, and Height in mm), for tadpoles tail length, height, and width are also provided (Tail_length, Tail_high, and Tail_witdth in mm). Finally, the estimated biovolume is also provided (Biovolumen in mm^3).
Sharing/Access information
We are incorporating all the primary information about the studied metacommunity that now comprises 20 years of continuous monitoring. We are promoting the open use of this database as a reference empirical system for the advancement of metacommunity ecology and biodiversity dynamics. In this sense, while we are open to collaborations, no restriction to the open use of the published databases is imposed.
You can also find:
- Environmental information (e.g. Area, Volume, Heterogeneity, and connectivity of each pond)
- Plant records (plant biomass, and species occurrences along 61 ponds sampling every year since 2005).
Code/Software
An R-code for estimating community centralities with an associated null model is provided. The method is based on the identification of a threshold distance for constructing a metacommunity network and estimating the centrality metric associated with each local community. The objective is to find the threshold distance with the centrality metrics more closely associated with a metric of local community structure (e.g. local richness, modularity, or nestedness). See Illarze et al. 2024 for further explanation of the model procedure. The parameters are i) a distance matrix between local communities; ii) a vector with the community ID for which local information is available (number of rows or columns in the distance matrix to be used); the number of threshold distances to be used (cuts); if the centrality metric should be weighted or not; a "centrality" for identifying the centrality metric to be considered and a vector with information of community structure in each community. Further details are available in the R.script.
In our experience, this method has a good performance with some metrics and study systems and not in others. We interpret a good performance when one or two significant distances are identified. A regular performance for us is when no or several significant thresholds are identified and/or when no clear trend in the association between centrality metrics associated with each threshold distance and its association with the community metric is evidenced.
Methods
In October 2008, ponds were sampled with a dipnet (15 x 20 cm, 1 mm mesh) through a standardised routine in which five equidistant samples were taken along the two main orthogonal axes of most of the ponds. To account for the range of pond areas, which exhibits differences in several orders of magnitude (from 6.6 m2 to 24,673 m2) when the quadrants were closer than two meters, the number of sampled units was reduced, and if the quadrants were more than 10 meters apart, then the number of sampled units was increased. The samples were washed, coarse separated, and preserved in 95% alcohol for identification. Individuals were classified with the highest possible taxonomic resolution. In cases where it was not possible to achieve a higher taxonomic resolution, individuals were assigned to taxa easily separable by morphological differences (i.e. morphospecies or the lowest possible hierarchy category). Each individual was measured with a digital caliper (to the nearest 0.01 mm).
Environmental data
Depth was measured at least 10 times in major and minor axes. The volume of the pond was estimated as the volume of an oval using the length of the major and minor axes of the ponds and the mean depth. Heterogeneity was estimated as the number of 'islands', emergent mounds above water level, per meter of the main and minor axes of the ponds. Vegetation biomass corresponds to standing biomass per unit sample—400 cm2 (20 x 20 cm). Vegetation species richness is the total richness of plants in a pond. The shape was approximated as the major/minor axis ratio. Geographical coordinates, latitude, and longitude of each pond were recorded.