DOI: 10.5061/dryad.z612jm6mb
title: Ant community dynamics and carrion decomposition in Mediterranean oaks

description: This dataset contains information from a study on the decomposition of
 small pieces of carrion in a Mediterranean dehesa. Data were collected
 from an exclusion experiment conducted in two areas with different land
 management practices: pastureland and cereal fields. The experiment was
 designed in pairs to account for variations in carrion decomposition
 between tree cavities and the surrounding ground. The dataset includes
 multiple files that enable the evaluation of carrion decomposition,
 differences of the  associated ant communities, differences in
 bait detection by vertebrates based on carrion location, and the relative
 contribution of vertebrates to the total mass removed.
description: # Ant community dynamics and carrion decomposition in Mediterranean oaks
 `carriondata` database used to assess carrion decomposition. It allowed us
 to assess the effect of decomposition as a function of the treatments,
 study areas, and carrion location (tree cavities/ground). Data was
 collected from an exclusion experiment carried out in a Mediterranean
 ecosystem (see above for more details). `antcommunity`: contains data of
 the ant community sampled during the decomposition experiment. This was
 used to evaluate differences between the ant communities  based on the
 study area and the pitfall location (ground or tree cavity) and to compare
 community diversities using the Hutcheson t-test. `LDA_result`: This file
 contains the matrix resulting from the discriminant analysis. This matrix
 was useful for creating a figure of our ant communities.
 `phylogeneticdata`:  contains  different functional traits  for each of
 the ant species of our ant community (data obtained from Arnán et al. 2012
 and Retana et al. 2015). Together with the published phylogenetic tree of
 the European species assembled by Xavier Arnán and Xim Cerdá (2015) we
 performed our phylogenetic comparative analyses to identify the main
 factors driving scavenging behaviour in our study area. We made a
 pre-selection of all functional traits previous to the analyses.
 `survivaldata`: Contains data used to evaluate carrion detection by
 vertebrates. `relativecontributioncarrion`: contains data to assess the
 relative contribution of vertebrates and invertebrates to the total mass
 removed (in grams) in each microhabitat (tree cavity/ground) and land
 management (pastureland/cereal field). ## Columns in carriondata.xlsx 1.
 `ID`: Numerical identifier for each piece of carrion. 2. `Tree_ID`:
 Identifier for the tree associated with the carrion sample (paired
 design). 3. `carrion_treatment`: treatment applied to the carrion (EV=
 vertebrate exclusion; EI=vertebrate+invertebrate exclusion;NE=control). 4.
 `study_area`: The specific area where the carrion was located
 (bec_con=becerra; alicun=alicun). 5. `time`: days of the experiment (1-12
 days). Day 1 corresponds to the initial carrion weights. 6. `weight`: The
 weight of the carrion at a given day (g) 7. `carrion_location`: ground or
 tree cavity. ## Columns in antcommunity.xlsx 1. `Tree_ID`:  A number that
 identifies each paired of pitfalls (pitfall in tree cavity and pitfall on
 the ground). 2. `study_area`: The specific area where the carrion was
 located (bec_con=becerra; alicun=alicun). 3. `carrion_location`: ground or
 tree cavity. 4. Species columns (25 ant species): These represent
 different ant species found in the community, sampled by pitfalls. The
 column headers are composed of the first three letters of the genus and
 the first three letters of the species name. For more details on species
 names, please refer to Table 2 of the article (Salido et al., 2024). ##
 Columns in LDA_results.xlsx 1. `group`: variable grouping the location
 (cavity or ground) along with the study area (Becerra/Conejo). 2. `LDA1`:
 Contains the scores accounting for the maximum variance between our groups
 (resulting from the linear discriminant analysis). 3. `LDA2`: Contains the
 scores accounting for the second most significant variance between our
 groups (resulting from the linear discriminant analysis). 4. `Freq`:
 Details the frequency of those scores. ## Columns in phylogeneticdata.xlsx
 1. `species`: contains the names of the different species from our ant
 community in each row. 2. `presence_carrion`: indicates whether an ant
 species was observed feeding on carrion during the decomposition
 experiment (0 = absent, 1 = present). 3. `tree`: indicates whether a
 particular species is considered arboreal (0 = not arboreal, 1 =
 arboreal). 4. `ws`: worker size; worker body size from the tip of
 mandibles to tip of the gaster (mm) 5. `wp`: species polymorphism; mean
 worker size divided by the range of worker size (mm) 6. `diur`: indicates
 whether a species is considered diurnal (0 = not diurnal, 1 = diurnal). 7.
 `dom`: indicates whether a species is considered dominant (0 = not
 dominant, 1 = dominant). 8. `fsi`: the species forages individually (0 =
 no, 1 = yes). 9. `fsg`: the species forages in groups (0 = no, 1 = yes).
 10. `fsc`: the species forages collectively (0 = no, 1 = yes). 11. `cs`:
 colony size; mean number of workers per colony, ln transformed. 12. `nq`:
 number of queens (0= Monongyny; 0.5=Both monogyny and polygyny; 1=
 Polygyny). 13. `nn`: number of nests (0= Monongyny; 0.5=Both monogyny and
 polygyny; 1= Polygyny). 14. `cft`: colony foundation type (0= DCF
 "dependent colony foundation"; 0.5= Both DCF and ICF; 1= ICF
 "independent colony foundation") ## Columns in survivaldata.xlsx
 1. `ID`: Numerical identifier for each piece of carrion. 2. `time`: Days
 until the carrion was detected (when a piece of carrion disappears or a
 cage was moved from its initial position). 3. `location`: tree cavity or
 ground. 4. `status`: 0 if not detected, 1 if detected. 5. `area`: Study
 area, referring to different types of land management. `Bec_con` indicates
 a less transformed pastureland, while `Alicun` indicates a more
 transformed cereal field. ## Columns in relativecontributioncarrion.xlsx
 1. `carriontreatment`: for this analysis we only consider i)
 vertebrate_exclusion: accessible only to invertebrates and ii)
 free_access: accessible to both vertebrates and invertebrates. 2.
 `location`: tree cavity or ground. 3. `degree_habitattransf`: refers to
 the type of land management in the study areas (pastureland or
 cereal_field). 4. `total_eliminado`: total mass removed after the
 decomposition experiment (in grams). 
 
 **Meaning of Empty Fields in datasets** Empty fields correspond to
 unobserved or unavailable data; they do not represent zero values and
 should be treated as missing data (NA). ## Experimental methodology
 Carrion decomposition experiment consisted in exposing 120 pieces of
 chicken breast (referred to as "carrion") to three different
 treatments: vertebrate exclusion (accessible only to invertebrates),
 vertebrate+invertebrate exclusion (accessible only to flying insects) and
 control or free access (accessible to both vertebrates and invertebrates).
 These was done in two different study area with different land management
 practices (less transformed pastureland and more transformed cereal
 field). Decomposition was evaluated in a paired design (20 pairs, 10
 pairs/study area) were we randomly select holm oak trees and exposed
 simultaneously 3 treatments within cavities and 3 treatments on the
 ground. Carrion was weighed daily (12 days). During the first two days of
 the experiment ant community was sampled by pitfalls traps in these pairs
 tree cavity-ground. Except for the phylogenetic data, the rest of datasets
 were created from our field-collected data.