Historical records of plant-insect interactions in subarctic Finland [Collection]

Objectives Historical ecological records document the diversity and composition of communities decades or centuries ago. They can provide a valuable benchmark for comparisons with modern communities. Historical datasets on plant-animal interactions allow for modern comparisons that examine the stabi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zoller, L., Knight, Tiffany
Format: Other/Unknown Material
Language:English
Published: figshare 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=27518
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5828663.v4
Description
Summary:Objectives Historical ecological records document the diversity and composition of communities decades or centuries ago. They can provide a valuable benchmark for comparisons with modern communities. Historical datasets on plant-animal interactions allow for modern comparisons that examine the stability of species and interaction networks over long periods of time and in response to anthropogenic change. Here we present a curated dataset of interactions between plants and insects in subarctic Finland, generated from digitizing a historical document from the late 19th century and updating the taxonomy using currently accepted nomenclature. Data description The resulting dataset contains 654 records of plant-insect interactions observed during the years 1895–1900, and includes 498 unique interactions between 86 plant species and 173 insect taxa. Syrphidae, Apidae and Muscidae were the insect families involved in most interactions, and interactions were most observed with the plant species Angelica archangelica, Salix caprea, and Chaerophyllum prescottii. Interaction data are available as csv-file and provide a valuable resource on plant-insect interactions over 120 years ago in a high latitude ecosystem that is undergoing rapid climate change.