DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0k6djhbfn
title: Data and code from: Evaluating baselines for long-term ecological monitoring of biodiversity trends: Insights from the US National Ecological Observatory Network carabid data

description: Evidence is mounting that rapid environmental change threatens global
 insect biodiversity, underscoring the need for informed conservation
 strategies that protect both species and the ecosystem services they
 provide. Armed with accurate baseline community data, long-term
 continental-scale monitoring projects are invaluable for detecting and
 predicting responses to ecological change. However, high species diversity
 and temporal variability in population sizes can hinder our ability to
 establish baselines, and, thus, obscure, exaggerate, or reverse temporal
 trends in long-term insect data. With its scale and consistent protocol,
 the US National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) carabid pitfall
 trapping data provides an excellent case study for evaluating sampling
 effort. We use species incidence-frequencies calculated from more than
 200,000 identified carabids across up to 10 years of sampling and 46 field
 sites to extrapolate asymptotic richness and diversity metrics. We find
 that the completeness of observed species richness and diversity is
 negatively related to year-to-year species turnover and diversity metrics
 themselves, but improves with increasing sampling duration. While observed
 diversity converges to asymptotic estimates within a few years, we find
 that NEON’s intensive sampling is unlikely to capture all species, even if
 no biodiversity loss occurs over its 30-year span. If the mechanisms
 driving these patterns can be understood, they hold important implications
 for optimizing sampling designs in studies focused on ecological change
 detection, particularly for diverse and temporally variable taxa. Our
 findings underscore the critical importance of long-term monitoring and
 prompt reconsideration of how we interpret trends in existing biodiversity
 data, given the complexity of establishing robust baselines.
description: # Data and code from: Evaluating baselines for long-term ecological
 monitoring of biodiversity trends: Insights from the US National
 Ecological Observatory Network carabid data Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.0k6djhbfn](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0k6djhbfn) ##
 Description of the data and file structure This code is designed for the
 purpose of analyzing open ecological data provided by the National
 Ecological Observatory Network. Specifically, this project investigates
 organismal observational data in order to calculate sampling necessary for
 understanding richness and diversity at NEON sites distributed across the
 country. The National Ecological Observatory Network is a major facility
 fully funded by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings,
 and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material do not
 necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
 Acknowledgement: The National Ecological Observatory Network is a program
 sponsored by the National Science Foundation and operated under
 cooperative agreement by Battelle. This material is based in part upon
 work supported by the National Science Foundation through the NEON
 Program. ### Files and variables #### File: Claus_et_al_2026.zip
 **Description:** Contains two folders: "code" and
 "data."  All data originate from the NEON carabid pitfall
 sampling data product RELEASE-2025. All information regarding the protocol
 and data structure is
 available: [https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/DP1.10022.001](https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/DP1.10022.001) Data files provided are entirely derived from the publicly CC0 NEON data via the provided code. Missing data is represented by NA. All files and component fields within all derived data files are described in the variables.csv file within the data folder. This file provides the file, field name, description, data type, unit, and source for each field. ## Code/software With appropriate packages installed and file paths defined, all code within the "code" folder can be run in the sequence defined numerically in the file names. For the purpose of publication R version 4.4.2 was run with R Studio version 2024.12.0+467. ## Access information Other publicly accessible locations of the data: * NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network). Ground beetles sampled from pitfall traps (DP1.10022.001), RELEASE-2025. [https://doi.org/10.48443/cd21-q875](https://doi.org/10.48443/cd21-q875). Dataset accessed from [https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/DP1.10022.001/RELEASE-2025](https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/DP1.10022.001/RELEASE-2025) Data was derived from the following sources: * NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network). Ground beetles sampled from pitfall traps (DP1.10022.001), RELEASE-2025. [https://doi.org/10.48443/cd21-q875](https://doi.org/10.48443/cd21-q875). Dataset accessed from [https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/DP1.10022.001/RELEASE-2025](https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/DP1.10022.001/RELEASE-2025)