DOI: 10.5061/dryad.15dv41p30
title: Data for: Landscape diversity promotes stable food web architectures in large rivers

description: Uncovering relationships between landscape diversity and species
 interactions is crucial for predicting how ongoing land-use change and
 homogenization will impact the stability and persistence of communities.
 However, such connections have rarely been quantified in nature. We
 coupled high-resolution river sonar imaging with annualized energetic food
 webs to quantify relationships between habitat diversity, energy flux, and
 trophic interaction strengths in large-river food web modules that support
 the endangered Pallid Sturgeon. Our results demonstrate a clear
 relationship between habitat diversity and species interaction strengths,
 with more diverse foraging landscapes containing higher production of prey
 and a greater proportion of weak and potentially stabilizing interactions.
 Additionally, rare patches of large and relatively stable river sediments
 intensified these effects and further reduced interaction strengths by
 increasing prey diversity. Our findings highlight the importance of
 landscape characteristics in promoting stabilizing food-web architectures
 and provide direct relevance for future management of imperiled species in
 a simplified and rapidly changing world.
description: This dataset contains habitat information from the Missouri River
 that was collected in 2013-2014 via side scan sonar, geoprocessed in
 ArcMap, and organized and analyzed in Microsoft Excel and R. Additionally,
 25-30 invertebrate samples were collected from the Missouri River
 throughout the year from a wide variety of habitats in 2014-2015. More
 specifically, the methods used to quantitatively sample invertebrate
 communities were as follows: main-channel sand habitat: a Ponar dredge
 sampler (0.052 m²) attached to a sounding reel on a boat; cobble/gravel: a
 Hess sampler (0.086 m²); wood: 250 μm mesh bags and scrubbed; depositional
 off-channels: a stovepipe core (0.031 m²); and large boulders: scrubbed in
 buckets while a D-frame dip net was held downstream. Samples were
 preserved with buffered formalin and rinsed onto nested sieves (1 mm and
 250 um) in the laboratory. Invertebrates were enumerated and measured to
 the nearest mm to estimate abundance, biomass, and secondary production.
 Movement data of Pallid Sturgeon were collected from 2003-2013 by a
 variety of state and federal agencieis. These data were used to estimate
 foraging distance (river km) by calculating the distance between tagging
 and recapture events. Pallid and Shovelnose sturgeon abundance
 (inidividuals/m2), biomass (g AFDM/m2), and size structure were estimated
 from mark-recapture efforts on the Missouri River in 2014 and these data
 were used to esimate secondary production (g AFDM/m2/year) of sturgeon.
 Sturgeon diets were collected using trammel netting and gastric lavage in
 2013-2014. Diets were processed similarly to benthic invertebrates and
 identified, measured, and counted under a microsope. Together these data
 are used to estimate annual consumption and trophic basis of production of
 sturgeon, and construct food web modules to estiamte trophic interaction
 strengths. Additionally, these data are used with the habitat information
 described above to relate properties in the physical habitat templet to
 the strengths and patterning of trophic interactions. 
description: Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, R