DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4xgxd25jd
title: Neighborhood benthic configuration reveals hidden social diversity: classified benthic data

description: Ecological interactions among benthic communities are crucial for shaping
 marine ecosystems. Understanding these interactions is essential for
 predicting how ecosystems will respond to environmental changes, invasive
 species, and conservation management. However, determining the prevalence
 of species interactions at the community scale is challenging. To overcome
 this challenge, we employ tools from social network analysis, specifically
 exponential random graph modeling (ERGM). Our approach explores the
 relationships among animal and plant organisms within their neighborhoods.
 Inspired by companion planting in agriculture, we use spatiotemporal
 co-occurrence as a measure of mixed species interaction. In other words,
 the variety of community interactions based on co-occurrence defines what
 we call "co-occurrence social diversity." Our objective is to
 use ERGM to quantify the proportion of interactions at both the simple
 paired level and the more complex triangle level, enabling us to measure
 and compare co-occurrence social diversity. Applying our approach to the
 Spanish coastal zone across 8 sites, 5 depths, and sunlit/shaded aspects,
 we discover that 80% of sessile communities, consisting of over a hundred
 species, exhibit co-occurrence social diversity, with 5% of species
 consistently forming associations with other species. These organism-level
 interactions likely have a significant impact on the overall character of
 the site.
description: a)      Study Sites The field data selection
 coincided with a program to quantify changes in the sessile community
 along a depth gradient in multiple locations of two distant geographic
 areas. The Spanish islands of Illes Medes and L'illa de Benidorm are
 located in the Mediterranean Sea and are nature reserves. L'illa de
 Benidorm is located about 3.5km from the coast, near Benidorm, and has
 been part of the Sierra Helada Natural Park since 2005. Illes Medes is an
 archipelago of seven islands about 0.85 km from L'Estartit. It has
 been protected since 1983 and became a National Protected Natural Park in
 2010. These two locations were selected due to their proximity to the
 coast, ease of sampling, rocky bottoms, and because they are island
 enclaves close to the coast. b)     Sampling
 design During May and June 2010, 6 dive sites in Illes
 Medes and 2 dive sites in L'illa de Benidorm  were selected. For each
 site, except Garbí and Gros due to a lack of suitable substrate, a
 photophilous aspect was paired with a sciaphilous aspect. To capture the
 impact of depth on the community assemblages, each site was surveyed  at
 different depths along the rocky reef wall at 2, 4, 7, 14, and 23 m deep.
 The sciaphilous aspects could not be located for the 2 sites in
 L'illa de Benidorm and only one set of transects at various depth
 profiles were photographed.  Based on the continuous line transect method,
 photo quadrats using a camera (Sony Cyber-shot Vario-Tessar 10.1 Mpx with
 a constant 45cm distance measurement frame) covered a 5m long transect for
 each depth profile. Approximately 25 overlapping images were captured per
 transect.  Later back in the laboratory, we identified every species
 (where possible) directly next to the photographed transect tape for each
 centimeter division so that 500 data points were recorded per transect.
 The final dataset contains 17 sites with five depth transects, resulting
 in 85 sets of benthic data.
description: # Neighborhood benthic configuration reveals hidden social diversity:
 classified benthic data Journal: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
 Society (series B). Special Issue: Connected interactions: enriching food
 web research by spatial and social interactions Paper Title: Neighborhood
 benthic configuration reveals hidden social diversity Authors: Stuart
 Kininmonth,, Diana Lopez Ferrando,, Mikel Becerro Background: The field
 data selection coincided with a program to quantify changes in the sessile
 community along a depth gradient in multiple locations of two distant
 geographic areas. The Spanish islands of Illes Medes and L'illa de
 Benidorm are located in the Mediterranean Sea and are nature reserves
 (figure 1 from paper). L'illa de Benidorm is located about 3.5km from
 the coast, near Benidorm, and has been part of the Sierra Helada Natural
 Park since 2005. Illes Medes is an archipelago of seven islands about 0.85
 km from L'Estartit. It has been protected since 1983 and became a
 National Protected Natural Park in 2010. These two locations were selected
 due to their proximity to the coast, ease of sampling, rocky bottoms, and
 because they are island enclaves close to the coast. During May and June
 2010, 8 locations (table 1 in paper) were selected and surveyed with
 replicates using SCUBA. For each specific location, we took many photo
 quadrats (figure S1 in paper) using a camera (Sony Cyber-shot Vario-Tessar
 10.1 Mpx with a constant 45cm distance measurement frame) to cover a 5m
 long transect at 2, 4, 7, 14, and 23 m deep. We identified every species
 (where possible) under the transect tape at a 1-centimeter resolution so
 that 500 data points were recorded per transect. The final dataset
 contains 17 sites with five depth transects, resulting in 85 sets of
 benthic data. The data: The data is in two worksheets; Medas-Transectes
 and Beni-Transectes. These directly relate to the locations Illes Medes
 and L'illa de Benidorm described above.