DOI: 10.5061/dryad.9s4mw6mqb
title: Animal metacommunities of temporary ponds in a flat grassland landscape of Uruguay

description: The database comprises a survey of an animal metacommunity of temporary
 ponds carried out in October 2008, in a grassland landscape of Uruguay.
 The animal groups involve macroinvertebrates, fishes, and amphibians.
 Individual occurrence, taxonomic affiliation, and traits associated with
 diet and body size are provided. The metacommunity is located in a flat
 landscape surrounded by hills, where a maximum of 61 ponds, every year,
 are filled with water in winter and dry out in summer in the same spatial
 locations. Information on species and morphospecies abundances at the
 sampling unit level was recorded in 18 ponds, the number of ponds that
 were active (i.e., with water) at the sampling date. These ponds are part
 of the metacommunity for which plants have been sampled every year since
 2005 in all ponds and for which environmental information was also
 compiled—data available in this same Dryad entry. Further surveys are
 being processed and will be available in the future. Data are
 provided for promoting the advancement of metacommunity theory,
 corroborating published studies, and generating novel ones. We are
 incorporating all the available information about the studied
 metacommunity that now comprises 20 years of continuous
 monitoring. The database includes animal species and
 morphospecies abundances at the sampling unit level for 18 temporary ponds
 sampled in October 2008. The species traits related to body sizes
 (measured for each individual) and trophic guild (obtained from
 literature) are presented together with the individual taxonomy. Note that
 species Order or family can also be used as a proxy of many conserved
 attributes like life history, resistance strategy, dispersal mode, or
 vulnerability to predators.
description: In October 2008, ponds were sampled with a dipnet (15 x 20 cm, 1
 mm mesh) through a standardised routine in which five equidistant samples
 were taken along the two main orthogonal axes of most of the ponds. To
 account for the range of pond areas, which exhibits differences in several
 orders of magnitude (from 6.6 m2 to 24,673 m2) when the quadrants were
 closer than two meters, the number of sampled units was reduced, and if
 the quadrants were more than 10 meters apart, then the number of sampled
 units was increased. The samples were washed, coarse separated, and
 preserved in 95% alcohol for identification. Individuals were classified
 with the highest possible taxonomic resolution. In cases where it was not
 possible to achieve a higher taxonomic resolution, individuals were
 assigned to taxa easily separable by morphological differences (i.e.
 morphospecies or the lowest possible hierarchy category). Each individual
 was measured with a digital caliper (to the nearest 0.01 mm).
 <strong>Environmental data</strong>
 Depth was measured at least 10 times in major and minor axes. The
 volume of the pond was estimated as the volume of an oval using the length
 of the major and minor axes of the ponds and the mean depth. Heterogeneity
 was estimated as the number of 'islands', emergent mounds above
 water level, per meter of the main and minor axes of the ponds. Vegetation
 biomass corresponds to standing biomass per unit sample—400
 cm<sup>2</sup> (20 x 20 cm). Vegetation species richness is
 the total richness of plants in a pond. The shape was approximated as the
 major/minor axis ratio. Geographical coordinates, latitude, and longitude
 of each pond were recorded.
description: # Animal metacommunities of temporary ponds in a flat grassland landscape
 of Uruguay Database of the animal metacommunity associated with 18
 temporary ponds of a total of 61 detected in a flat grassland landscape of
 Uruguay limited by hills and rivers. The sampling was performed in October
 2008. The plant communities associated with these ponds have survived each
 year since 2005. Environmental information is available elsewhere in this
 Dryad repository. ## Description of the data and file structure The
 database comprises a total of 6784 animal individuals, with the collection
 date, classified in order, family, genus, and species (or morphospecies),
 measured (height, width, length, and estimated biovolume), trophic guild
 (Carnivorous, omnivorous, herbivorous, detritivorous, filters),
 microhabitat stratum (Aquatic, terrestrial epigeum, and terrestrial
 hypogeum), and associated to sampling unit and pond (18 ponds in total).
 The references used for the taxonomic classification and guild category
 are also indicated. The number of sampling units was proportional to the
 size of ponds, which cover 5 orders of magnitude in area. Sampling details
 are explained elsewhere for other databases of the same system reported in
 this Dryad record. In this database, each row represents an individual
 sampled. The 19 columns indicate: the sampling date (Date), the sample
 pond (Pond), the sampling unit with the pond (Sampling_unit), the large
 taxonomic group (Taxonomic_group), if the individual is aquatic or
 terrestrial discerning between terrestrial epigeum or hypogeum
 (Aquatic/Terrestiral_epigeum/Terrestiral_hypogeum), the individual
 taxonomic, order, family, genus, and species (Order, Family, Genus, and
 Epithet respectively in columns names), the species name (Specie). The
 next columns inform about the species' functional traits. The trophic
 functional group (Trophic_Guild), literature used for classifying
 individuals to trophic guilds (Reference), body size dimensions (Length,
 Width, and Height in mm), for tadpoles tail length, height, and width are
 also provided (Tail_length, Tail_high, and Tail_witdth in mm). Finally,
 the estimated biovolume is also provided (Biovolumen in mm^3).  ##
 Sharing/Access information We are incorporating all the primary
 information about the studied metacommunity that now comprises 20 years of
 continuous monitoring. We are promoting the open use of this database as a
 reference empirical system for the advancement of metacommunity ecology
 and biodiversity dynamics. In this sense, while we are open to
 collaborations, no restriction to the open use of the published databases
 is imposed.  You can also find: * Environmental information (e.g. Area,
 Volume, Heterogeneity, and connectivity of each pond) * Plant records
 (plant biomass, and species occurrences along 61 ponds sampling every year
 since 2005). ## Code/Software An R-code for estimating community
 centralities with an associated null model is provided. The method is
 based on the identification of a threshold distance for constructing a
 metacommunity network and estimating the centrality metric associated with
 each local community. The objective is to find the threshold distance with
 the centrality metrics more closely associated with a metric of local
 community structure (e.g. local richness, modularity, or nestedness). See
 Illarze et al. 2024 for further explanation of the model procedure. The
 parameters are i) a distance matrix between local communities; ii) a
 vector with the community ID for which local information is available
 (number of rows or columns in the distance matrix to be used); the number
 of threshold distances to be used (cuts); if the centrality metric should
 be weighted or not; a "centrality" for identifying the
 centrality metric to be considered and a vector with information of
 community structure in each community. Further details are available in
 the R.script. In our experience, this method has a good performance with
 some metrics and study systems and not in others. We interpret a good
 performance when one or two significant distances are identified. A
 regular performance for us is when no or several significant thresholds
 are identified and/or when no clear trend in the association between
 centrality metrics associated with each threshold distance and its
 association with the community metric is evidenced.