Data from: Regional diversity reverses the negative impacts of an alien predator on local species-poor communities ...

• Main Authors: Loewen, Charlie J. G., Vinebrooke, Rolf D.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2017
• Subjects: spatial insurance effects; Eucyclops agilis; functional structure; Diaphanosoma birgei; biodiversity–ecosystem functioning; trait analysis; Macrocyclops albidus; Diacyclops thomasi; Leptodiaptomus tyrrelli; mountain lakes; Predator–prey interactions; Acanthodiaptomus denticornis; Acanthocyclops vernalis; Leptodiaptomus sicilis; multiple stressors; Chydorus sphaericus; Leptodiaptomus nudus; Arctodiaptomus arapahoensis; Aglaodiaptomus leptopus; Diacyclops navus; Chaoborus; Scapholeberis kingi; Ceriodaphnia quadrangula; Hesperodiaptomus arcticus; Bosmina longirostris; sportfish; Zooplankton
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pj763; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.pj763

Species diversity is often an implicit source of biological insurance for communities against the impacts of novel perturbations, such as the introduction of an invasive species. High environmental heterogeneity (e.g., a mountainous gradient) is expected to beget greater regional species diversity and variation in functional traits related to environmental tolerances. Thus, heterogeneous metacommunities are expected to provide more tolerant colonists that buffer stressed local communities in the absence of dispersal limitation. We tested the hypothesis that importation of a regional zooplankton pool assembled from a diverse array of lakes and ponds lessens the impacts of a novel predator on local species-poor alpine communities by increasing response diversity (i.e., diversity of tolerances to environmental change) as mediated by variation in functional traits related to predator evasion. We also tested if impacts varied with temperature, as warming may modify (e.g., dampen or amplify) invasion effects. An ... : Organism concentrations in mesocosm tanksConcentrations of zooplankton species (see Table 1 for species codes), Chaoborus larvae, and total chlorophyll (phytoplankton and periphyton) in experimental mesocosms (treatments noted) on each sampling date. Available data presented as micrograms/L.Dryad.Loewen_and_Vinebrooke.Ecol.2016.Org_conc_in_mesos.csv ...