DOI: 10.5068/d1t68m
title: Data from: Multi-trophic occupancy modeling connects temporal dynamics of woodpeckers and beetle sign following fire

description: In conifer forests of western North America, wildlife populations can
 change rapidly in the decade following wildfire as trees die and animals
 respond to concomitant resource pulses that occur across multiple trophic
 levels. In particular, black-backed woodpeckers (Picoides arcticus) show
 predictable temporal increases then declines following fire; this
 trajectory is widely believed to be a response to the woodpeckers'
 main prey, woodboring beetle larvae of the families Buprestidae and
 Cerambycidae, but we lack understanding of how abundances of these
 predators and prey may be associated in time or space. Here, we pair
 woodpecker surveys over 10 years with surveys of woodboring beetle sign
 and activity, collected at 128 survey plots across 22 recent fires, to ask
 whether accumulated beetle sign indicates current or past black-backed
 woodpecker occurrence, and whether that relationship is mediated by the
 number of years since fire. We test this relationship using an integrative
 multi-trophic occupancy model. Our results demonstrate that woodboring
 beetle sign is a positive indicator of woodpecker presence 1–3 years
 following fire, an uninformative indicator from 4-6 years after fire, and
 a negative indicator beginning 7 years following fire. Woodboring beetle
 activity, itself, is temporally variable and dependent on tree species
 composition, with beetle sign generally accumulating over time,
 particularly in stands with diverse tree communities, but decreasing over
 time in Pinus-dominated stands where faster bark decay rates lead to brief
 pulses of beetle activity followed by rapid degradation of tree substrate
 and accumulated beetle sign. Altogether, the strong connections of
 woodpecker occurrence to beetle activity support prior hypotheses of how
 multi-trophic interactions govern rapid temporal dynamics of primary and
 secondary consumers in burned forests. While our results indicate that
 beetle sign is, at best, a rapidly shifting and potentially misleading
 measure of woodpecker occurrence, the better we understand the interacting
 mechanisms underlying temporally dynamic systems, the more successfully we
 will be able to predict the outcomes of management actions.
description: The dataset is a combination of (1) data on the detection and
 non-detection of black-backed woodpeckers and (2) woodboring beetle
 surveys at points located within fires in the Sierra Nevada, California.
 All details on data collection are provided within the associated
 mansucript. Very limited pre-processing was done to data prior to their
 inclusion in the attached files. Primarily, data have been re-formatted
 from database flat-files into R-based data objects that faciliate
 analysis. The included code provides additional processing and formatting,
 as well as running the primary JAGS model analysis, as described in the
 manuscript.
description: Files include 1 .R code script file and 2 .Rdata data files. The
 code script is text-based and can be opened in any .txt reader. The .Rdata
 files are intended to be opened up directly within the R programming
 environment. R can be downloaded for free at https://www.r-project.org/.