Data and code from: Breakdown in seasonal dynamics of subtropical ant communities with land-cover change
Creators: name: Kass, Jamie
name: Yoshimura, Masashi
name: Ogasawara, Masako
name: Suwabe, Mayuko
name: Hita Garcia, Francisco
name: Fischer, Georg
name: Dudley, Kenneth
name: Donohue, Ian
name: Economo, Evan
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Japan
insect
Monitoring
subtropics
temporal
variability

description: Concerns about widespread human-induced declines in insect populations are mounting, yet little is known about how land-use change modifies the dynamics of insect communities, particularly in understudied regions. Here, we examine how the seasonal activity patterns of ants—key drivers of terrestrial ecosystem functioning—vary with anthropogenic land-cover change on a subtropical island landscape, and whether differences in temperature or species composition can explain observed patterns. Using trap captures sampled biweekly over two years from a biodiversity monitoring network covering Okinawa Island, Japan, we processed 1.2 million individuals and reconstructed activity patterns within and across habitat types. Forest communities exhibited greater temporal variability of activity than those in more developed areas. Using time-series decomposition to deconstruct this pattern, we found that sites with greater human development exhibited ant communities with diminished seasonality, reduced synchrony, and higher stochasticity compared to sites with greater forest cover. Our results cannot be explained by variation in regional or site temperature patterns, or by differences in species richness or composition among sites. Our study raises the possibility that disruptions to natural seasonal patterns of functionally key insect communities may comprise an important and underappreciated consequence of global environmental change that must be better understood across Earth's biomes.
description: All analysis were conducted in R.Funding provided by: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science<br>Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691<br>Award Number: Funding provided by: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science<br>Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691<br>Award Number: 20F20774Funding provided by: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science<br>Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691<br>Award Number:
description: The ant activity data used in the analysis was collected with Sea, Land, and Air Malaise (SLAM) traps on Okinawa Island in Japan from 2016-2018, and was processed using the code provided in the Zenodo archive (see README for links and the paper for references). Other datasets come from the Japan Meterological Agency (JMA), <em>in situ</em> climate variables for sampling stations measured on-site, and land-cover data for Okinawa developed by our team. The data used in the analysis is included in the data upload (with JMA and land-cover data files in a Zenodo supplemental information under the CC-By 4 license), and all the analysis code is included in the R package provided in a separate Zenodo software archive. NOTE: All datasets (from Dryad and Zenodo) must be put into a single folder called `/data` within the main directory of the R analysis package before running any code. Please consult the README for further details on the data and code.