DOI: 10.5061/dryad.xksn02vrd
title: Decline in diversity of tropical soil fauna under experimental warming

description: Climate change is exacerbating a global decline in biodiversity. Numerous
 observational studies link rising temperatures to declining biological
 abundance, richness, and diversity in terrestrial ecosystems, yet few
 studies have considered the highly diverse and functionally significant
 communities of tropical forest soil and leaf litter fauna. Here, we report
 major declines in the order-level richness and diversity of soil and leaf
 litter fauna following three years of experimental whole-profile soil
 warming in a tropical forest. This decline was greatest during the dry
 season, suggesting that warming effects could be exacerbated by drought.
 Contrary to findings from higher latitudes, total faunal abundance
 increased under warming, with major shifts in community composition. These
 responses were driven by increased dominance of a relatively small number
 of thermophilic taxa, and of oribatid mites in particular. Our study
 provides direct experimental evidence that warming causes diversity
 declines and compositional shifts for tropical forest soil and leaf litter
 fauna, a result with potential consequences for soil carbon cycling and
 which highlights the vulnerability of tropical biodiversity to climate
 change.
description: # Decline in diversity of tropical soil fauna under experimental warming
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xksn02vrd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xksn02vrd) ## Description of the data and file structure Raw data for Szczygieł et al. 2024 'Decline in diversity of tropical soil fauna under experimental warming' Proceedings B We used this raw data with the vegan package in R, among others, to calculate and visualize abundance, richness, diversity, and community composition data. **Explanation of the columns:** * Taxon: a set of all possible taxa that can be extracted via Tullgren funnels at our site, mostly at Order level, for each sample/date combination. * Date: the date that the sample was collected * Season: the season the sample was collected (wet or dry) * Plot Type: treatment type of the plot where the sample was collected. W = warmed, C = control * Sample: sample identifier for each sampling date. The number corresponds to the SWELTR plot where the sample was collected, the letter corresponds to the sample type (S = soil, L = leaf-litter) * Sample Type: the material placed in the Tullgren funnels for extraction - Soil or Litter * Wet Mass (g): mass of the sample in grams as collected in the field and placed in the Tullgren funnel. * Avg. Soil moisture (%): moisture value collected with a Delta Thetaprobe soil moisture meter. * Calc. dry mass (g): calculated hypothetical dry mass in grams based on the wet mass and soil moisture. * Avg. Temp (degrees C): average soil or litter temperature in degrees C of the three subsamples that constitute each sample collected. * Count: number of individuals observed for a particular taxon in a particular sample collected at the indicated date No data is available for all cells that contain 'NA'.  ## Access information Other publicly accessible locations of the data: * n/a Data was derived from the following sources: * n/a