Data and code from: Accounting for species interactions is necessary for predicting how arctic arthropod communities respond to climate change ...

• Main Authors: Abrego, Nerea, Roslin, Tomas, Huotari, Tea, Ji, Yinqiu, Schmid, Niels Martin, Wang, Jiaxin, Yu, Douglas W., Ovaskainen, Otso
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Greenland; Climate change; East Greenland; Zackenberg
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cc2fqz65p; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.cc2fqz65p

Species interactions are known to structure ecological communities. Still, the influence of climate change on biodiversity has primarily been evaluated by correlating individual species distributions with local climatic descriptors, then extrapolating into future climate scenarios. We ask whether predictions on arctic arthropod response to climate change can be improved by accounting for species interactions. For this, we use a 14-year-long, weekly time series from Greenland, resolved to the species level by mitogenome mapping. During the study period, temperature increased by 2 °C and arthropod species richness halved. We show that with abiotic variables alone, we are essentially unable to predict species responses, but with species interactions included, the predictive power of the models improves considerably. Cascading trophic effects thereby emerge as important in structuring biodiversity response to climate change. Given the need to scale up from species-level to community-level projections of ... : The data were collected as part of the GEM program in Zackenberg, a High Arctic site located in North-East Greenland (74°28’ N; 20°34’ W). Arthropods were sampled weekly during the growing season from 1997 to 2013, using yellow-pitfall traps located in a mesic heath habitat. The material derives from three traps located 5 meters from each other. The 2010 samples were lost in transit from Greenland, so data from this year are missing. The species data was derived mostly from mitogenome mapping (see Ji et al 2020). The species data were complemented with individually DNA-barcoded samples in the case of samples with few individuals, and data on Diptera species from subsamples that had been identified in an independent morphological study (but had not yet been returned and thus could not be sequenced). The species data is accompanied by functional information in the form of the trophic levels (herbivore, omnivore, parasitoid, predator, saprophage or detritivore). As environmental data, there are data on weekly ...