DOI: 10.5061/dryad.465ts
title: Data from: Context-dependent effects of large wildlife declines on small mammal communities in central Kenya

description: Many species of large wildlife have declined drastically worldwide. These
 reductions often lead to profound shifts in the ecology of entire
 communities and ecosystems. However, the effects of these large wildlife
 declines on other taxa likely hinge upon both underlying abiotic
 properties of these systems and on the types of secondary anthropogenic
 changes associated with wildlife loss, making impacts difficult to
 predict. To better understand how these important contextual factors
 determine the consequences of large-wildlife declines on other animals in
 a community, we examined the effects of three common forms of
 large-wildlife loss -removal without replacement (using fences), removal
 followed by replacement with domestic stock, and removal accompanied by
 crop agricultural use- on small mammal abundance, diversity, and community
 composition, in landscapes that varied in several abiotic attributes
 (rainfall, soil fertility, land-use intensity) in central Kenya. We found
 that small mammal communities were indeed heavily impacted by all forms of
 large-wildlife decline, showing, on average: i) higher densities, ii)
 lower species richness per site, and iii) different species assemblages in
 sites from which large wildlife were removed. However, the nature and
 magnitude of these effects were strongly context-dependent. Rainfall, type
 of land-use change, and the interaction of these two factors were key
 predictors of both the magnitude and type of responses of small mammals.
 The strongest effects, particularly abundance responses, tended to be
 observed in low-rainfall areas. Whereas isolated wildlife removal
 primarily led to increased small mammal abundance, wildlife removal
 associated with secondary uses (agriculture, domestic stock) had much more
 variable effects on abundance and stronger impacts on diversity and
 composition. Collectively, these results 1) highlight the importance of
 context in determining the impacts of large-wildlife decline on small
 mammal communities, 2) emphasize the challenges in extrapolating results
 from controlled experimental studies to predict the effects of wildlife
 declines that are accompanied by secondary land-uses, and 3) suggest that,
 because of the context-dependent nature of the responses to large-wildlife
 decline, large-wildlife status alone cannot be reliably used to predict
 small mammal community changes.
description: Rodent abundance and
 community compositoin by siteThis file provides site
 level data for all analyses in this paper. Each row in the datasheet is a
 site (site_number), the paired associations in the site are indicated
 (pair_number). For each site a range of properties describing the site are
 provided. These include: Categorical descriptions of land use
 (LAND_USE_TYPE), the interpolated level of annual rainfall (a. rainfall)
 and seasonal rainfall (s.rainfall), the calculated level of vegetation
 cover (cover), number of plant species per pin (species.per.pin), the max
 height of veg at each pin (max.height), the total plant species richness
 per plot (plant.species.richness), the average cover of dung from
 somesticated species (Dung.dom) and from wild species (Dung.wild), the
 proportion of pins with grass (grass), sedge (sedge), shrub (shrub),
 succulent (succulent), tree (tree), other woody species (woody), and
 agriculture species (agriculture; these species not counted as grasses or
 forbs to avoid duplicate counts). Predator density measured from camera
 traps is reported as number of predators per hour of camera trap data.
 Sand to silt ratio in pooled soil sample per site is also provided
 (sand.silt). All additional columns report catch per unit effort (CPUE) of
 mammal species per plot. Mammal species are abbreviated by the first two
 letters of genus and species.rodents_DRYAD.csv