Data from: Progressively excluding mammals of different body size affects community and trait structure of ground beetles ...

Mammalian grazing induces changes in vegetation properties in grasslands, which can affect a wide variety of other animals including many arthropods. However, the impacts may depend on the type and body size of these mammals. Furthermore, how mammals influence functional trait syndromes of arthropod...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wang, Xiaowei, Steiner, Magdalena, Schütz, Martin, Vandegehuchte, Martijn L., Risch, Anita C.
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: Dryad 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q5f2j75
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.q5f2j75
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Summary:Mammalian grazing induces changes in vegetation properties in grasslands, which can affect a wide variety of other animals including many arthropods. However, the impacts may depend on the type and body size of these mammals. Furthermore, how mammals influence functional trait syndromes of arthropod communities is not well known. We progressively excluded large (e.g. red deer, chamois), medium (e.g. alpine marmot, mountain hare), and small (e.g. mice) mammals using size-selective fences in two vegetation types (short- and tall-grass vegetation) of subalpine grasslands. We then assessed how these exclusions affected the community composition and functional traits of ground beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae), and which vegetation characteristic mediated the observed effects. Total carabid biomass, the activity densities of carabids with specific traits (i.e. small eyes, short wings), the richness of small-eyed species and the richness of herbivorous species were significantly higher when certain mammals were ... : DataDryad_OIK-05198.R2 ...