DOI: 10.5061/dryad.p8cz8w9xg
title: Costa Rica mosquito community species occurrence and site environmental data, July - August 2017

description: Land use change is an important driver of both biodiversity loss and
 zoonotic disease transmission in tropical countryside landscapes.
 Developing solutions for protecting biodiversity, public health, and
 livelihoods in working landscapes requires understanding the spatial
 scales at which habitat characteristics such as land cover shape
 biodiversity, especially for arthropods that transmit pathogens. A growing
 body of evidence shows that species richness for many taxa correlates with
 tree cover at small spatial scales of &lt;100 m, indicating that local
 tree cover management is a promising conservation tool. To investigate
 whether mosquito species richness, community composition, and presence of
 specific disease vector species respond to tree cover—and if so, whether
 at spatial scales similar to other taxa—we surveyed mosquito communities
 along a tree cover gradient and across agricultural, residential, and
 forested land uses in rural southern Costa Rica. We found that tree cover
 was both positively correlated with mosquito species richness and
 negatively correlated with the presence of the common invasive dengue
 vector Aedes albopictus, particularly at small spatial scales of 80 –
 200m. Beyond tree cover, land use type predicted community composition and
 Ae. albopictus presence, but not species richness. The results suggest
 that preservation and expansion of tree cover at local scales can protect
 biodiversity for a wide range of taxa and also confer protection against
 disease vector occurrence.
description: Field-caught mosquitoes captured from sites with varying land
 uses and land cover in southwestern Costa Rica were identified by DNA
 sequencing and morphologically (<em>Aedes </em>genus only).
 The file "SpeciesSiteData_CRMosquitoes_4Dec2023.csv" contains,
 for each site included in the survey, presence-absence data for each
 species observed, and environmental variables relating to land use, tree
 cover, and climate. Land use categories, GPS coordinates, and elevation
 were recorded by the field team at the time of sample collection. Tree
 cover values were calculated from a raster of fine-scale tree cover
 created by Echeverri <em>et al.,</em> available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn8w7. Mean annual temperature was extracted from the WorldClim bioclim dataset (https://www.worldclim.org/data/worldclim21.html). The file "OTUSequences_8Feb2021.csv" contains the cleaned DNA sequences, grouped by OTU, that were used for taxonomic identification.  
description: # Costa Rica mosquito community species occurrence and site environmental
 data, July - August 2017 
 ## Description of the data and file structure The file
 "SpeciesSiteData_CRMosquitoes_4Dec2023.csv" contains, for each
 site included in the survey, presence-absence data for each species
 observed, and environmental variables relating to land use, tree cover,
 and climate. **OTU** = identifier code for operational taxonomic units
 defined by 97% or greater sequence similarity **Site** = site ID code
 **PresAbs** = 0 if the OTU was absent, 1 if the OTU was present
 **Species** = taxonomic identification for the OTU, determined by
 comparison with BOLD and Genbank sequence databases **Canton** =
 administrative unit in which the site was located **Region** = larger
 geographic region in which the site was located **num_collection_events**
 = number of times traps were set at the site during the survey period
 **num_pres** = number of collection events during which Aedes albopictus
 was morphologically identified **albo_PresAbs** = 0 if Aedes albopictus
 was never observed at the site, 1 if Aedes albopictus was observed at
 least once **LUclass** = land use category of the survey site: forest,
 agriculture, or residential **Latitude** = site latitude **Longitude** =
 site longitude **T.Aedes** = count of specimens morphologically identified
 as Aedes albopictus or Aedes aegypti **Elevation** = site elevation (m)
 **NT** = count of specimens identified via sequencing (Nontarget species,
 i.e. all individuals not identified morphologically as Aedes albopictus or
 Aedes aegypti) **Total** = total count of mosquitoes trapped at the site
 **Type** = finer categorizations of land use (e.g., "coffee
 plantation" instead of "agriculture") **Extraction** =
 whether the DNA samples were sequenced during the first or second
 sequencing run **TempMean** = mean annual site temperature (ºC), extracted
 from WorldClim 30s bioclim dataset **tree_cover_XXm** = percent tree cover
 at XX m radius surrounding the site, calculated from fine scale tree cover
 map in Echeverri et al. 2022. XX values range from 30 to 1000 meters. The
 file "OTUSequences_8Feb2021.csv" contains the cleaned DNA
 sequences, grouped by OTU, that were used for taxonomic identification.  
 **cluste**r = OTU ID number, converted to the convention "OTUXX"
 in the species and site data file **sequence** = cleaned DNA sequence
 corresponding to the OTU ID The file
 "CR_Site_Coords_ForAnalysis.csv" is a subset of
 "SpeciesSiteData_CRMosquitoes_4Dec2023.csv" containing just the
 Site, Latitude, and Longitude columns used to extract environmental data
 from WorldClim tree cover rasters. ## Sharing/Access information Data was
 derived from the following sources: * tree cover data from Echeverri et
 al. 2022:
 *
 climate data from WorldClim:
 ## Code/Software R
 code to explore the species observation data and run the analyses of
 species richness and Aedes albopictus presence/absence is contained in the
 file "4Dec2023_Costa Rica Mosquito Community Assembly.R". R code
 to perform the community turnover analyses (NMDS, PERMANOVA, and GDM) is
 contained in the file
 "4Dec2023_CommunityTurnover_CRMosquitoes.R". R code to extract
 percent tree cover from the fine-scale tree cover map in Echeverri et al.
 2022 is contained in the file "tree cover data extraction.R".