We investigated the effects of oil palm understory vegetation management on termite mound activity and non-termite inhabitants. We found a diversity of taxa, most of which were unaffected by understory management. Mound volume and termite activity had taxa-specific effects on abundance. Preserving mounds in oil palm plantations will benefit biodiversity.

We sampled termite mounds in mature oil palm plantations that varied in their understory management (three treatments). We measured mound height and radius and destructively hand-searched the mounds. We recorded the presence of termites (all mounds were Macrotermes gilvus), and anything else readily visible by eye. We identified the snakes to species, spiders to family, and recorded the presence of ants, centipedes, scorpions, beetles, cockroaches, and earthworms.

Each line is an individual termite mound, except for 'Mound Code F06NA' - we found no termite mounds in plot F06, so included this line to remind users that this plot was searched for mounds (just none were found). Mounds with NA values were not searched, either because they had been removed prior to this study as part of another experiment (exclusion removed), or for another reason which is explained in the notes.