DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4j0zpc8j4
title: Between a rock and a hard place: Comparing rock-dwelling animal prevalence across abandoned paddy, orchards, and rock outcrops in a biodiversity hotspot

description: Rock outcrops are geologically and ecologically unique ecosystems that
 harbour threatened and endemic biodiversity. These underappreciated, open
 ecosystems are undergoing rapid land-use changes, and the impacts of these
 changes on the threatened and endemic biodiversity are poorly understood,
 compared to the forested ecosystems. The unprotected, low-elevation
 lateritic plateaus of the northern Western Ghats of India are a case in
 point; they have high levels of endemism but are experiencing agricultural
 land-use change to orchards on the one hand and abandonment of traditional
 paddy cultivation on the other. We compared 1) the availability of loose
 rocks, a critical microhabitat for saxicolous animals, 2) the prevalence
 of an endemic caecilian (Gegeneophis seschachari), an endemic gecko
 (Hemidactylus albofasciatus), and a widespread snake (Echis carinatus),
 and 3) the composition and abundance of other rock-dwelling animals across
 12 less-disturbed natural rock outcrop sites and 10 sites each in
 agroforestry plantations and abandoned paddies using time-constrained
 searches. By surveying 7179 surface rocks, we encountered 5738 individuals
 from 38 animal taxa. We found that the abundance of large rocks, which
 were the most-preferred size class of rocks by animals, was higher in
 abandoned paddy compared to plateaus and orchards. However, the prevalence
 of the reptiles H. albofasciatus and E. carinatus was highest on
 undisturbed plateaus. Contrastingly, the prevalence of G. seshachari, a
 caecilian, was significantly higher under rocks in abandoned paddy than in
 less-disturbed plateaus or orchards. We also found significant differences
 between the rock-dwelling faunal assemblages across the three agricultural
 land-use types. Despite being adapted to persist in extremely variable
 climates on lateritic plateaus, multiple species/groups are vulnerable to
 land-use changes. However, G. seshachari and a few other taxa appear to
 benefit from certain kinds of agricultural land-use change, highlighting
 the context-specificity in species responses. This is one of the first
 studies to determine the impacts of the agricultural conversion of rock
 outcrops, thereby highlighting the conservation value of habitats that are
 often classified as wastelands.
description: The detailed methodology is explained in the manuscript. The data
 was collected as part of a larger project in the low-level lateritic
 plateaus of Ratnagiri, in the Konkan region of Maharashtra state in west
 India. We conducted fieldwork during June-September 2022. In this dataset,
 we provide information on rock-dwelling animals recorded under the loose
 rocks in three different land-use classes; i.e. less-disturbed lateritic
 plateaus, abandoned paddy, and orchards. The number of animals recorded
 under each rock, the size class of the rock, and survey details are
 provided. One-hour time-constrained searches were conducted at 32 sites
 spread across 11 unique plateaus. All individual animals (including the
 three focal animals) were counted, except in the case of ants
 (Formicidae), termites (Termitoidae), and mites (Acariformes) as they
 occurred in very high numbers making it difficult to count the exact
 number of individuals. See the manuscript for more details. 
description: Use the dataset "Jithin et al_Raw_Data.csv" to conduct
 the analysis described in the code "Jithin et al_Code.R"
 (available from Zenodo; see the software section of this dataset) to
 reproduce the analyses in Jithin et al. (2023) – Between a rock and a hard
 place: Comparing rock-dwelling animal prevalence across abandoned paddy,
 orchards, and rock outcrops in a biodiversity hotspot. A README file has
 been provided that gives additional details of the study.