Data from: Exposing the structure of an Arctic food web ...

• Main Authors: Vesterinen, Eero J., Wirta, Helena K., Hambäck, Peter A., Weingartner, Elisabeth, Rasmussen, Claus, Reneerkens, Jeroen, Schmidt, Niels M., Gilg, Olivier, Roslin, Tomas
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2016
• Subjects: Xysticus deichmanni; Xysticus labradorensis; Eulophidae; Calidris alba; Plectrophenax nivalis; Erigone arctica; molecular diet analysis; generalism; specialism; Emblyna borealis; Calidris alpina; Tachinidae; Ichneumonidae; Braconidae; Holocene; Pardosa glacialis; Arctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cv8cr; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.cv8cr

How food webs are structured has major implications for their stability and dynamics. While poorly studied to date, arctic food webs are commonly assumed to be simple in structure, with few links per species. If this is the case, then different parts of the web may be weakly connected to each other, with populations and species united by only a low number of links. We provide the first highly resolved description of trophic link structure for a large part of a high-arctic food web. For this purpose, we apply a combination of recent techniques to describing the links between three predator guilds (insectivorous birds, spiders, and lepidopteran parasitoids) and their two dominant prey orders (Diptera and Lepidoptera). The resultant web shows a dense link structure and no compartmentalization or modularity across the three predator guilds. Thus, both individual predators and predator guilds tap heavily into the prey community of each other, offering versatile scope for indirect interactions across different ... : Raw labeled reads from faecal samples of Calidris alpina, C. alba and Plectrophenax nivalisCollected while handling the birds or from the field while observing the birds. DNA extracted from individual pellets using Zymo Research Faecal Mini Kit. Sequenced using Ion Torrent PGM. FASTQ file header stands for: @READNUMBER;barcodelabel=SAMPLEID_COLLECTIONLOCALITY_DAY-MONTH-YEAR_BIRDSPECIES_BIRDAGE.labeled_reads_birds.fastqRaw labeled reads from samples of Pardosa glacialis, Xysticus deichmanni, X. labradorensis, Erigone arctica, and Emblyna borealisCollected from the field. DNA extracted from half individuals using Qiagen Animla Tissue Kit. Sequenced using Ion Torrent PGM. FASTQ file header stands for: @READNUMBER;barcodelabel=SAMPLEID. SampleID: Xd =labeled_reads_spiders.fastqOTU sequencesClustered to OTUs using USEARCH algorithm with default (97%) similarity. This way there is a little bit of oversplitting, and OTUs belonging to same biological species are clustered subsequently.label_otus.faReadmap linking ...