DOI: 10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gjbc
title: KF-metaweb: A trophic metaweb of freshwater ecosystems of South Korea (Version 1.1)

description: Motivation: The metaweb is a dictionary of nodes and their potential
 interactions developed for a particular region, focusing on a particular
 type of ecosystem. Based on the local biodiversity information at
 different spatial and temporal scales, the regional metaweb can be easily
 decomposed into local webs. The generated local webs are useful for
 understanding spatiotemporal variations in ecological interactions in a
 particular region. In this study, an attempt was made to develop a trophic
 metaweb for freshwater ecosystems in South Korea, called the KF-metaweb.
 The metaweb contains 22866 interactions between 446 taxa collected from
 730 studies. This metaweb can be used to understand the spatiotemporal
 variability of different local food webs and the effects of the
 environment on food web properties. Furthermore, this is the first metaweb
 developed for any Asian ecosystem that contains information about many
 interactions that are unavailable in any other existing database. In
 addition, this metaweb study enriches our global understanding of
 ecological interactions. Main types of variables contained: The
 data contained trophic interactions between resources (prey) and consumers
 (predators). Spatial location and grain: The mainland of South Korea and
 Jeju Island. Time period and grain: 2008–2021 Major
 taxa: Microalgae (belonging to the phyla Cyanobacteria, Bygra,
 Cryophyta, Myozoa, Ochrophyta, Charophyta, Chlorophyta, Euglenozoa, and
 Mycetozoa), zooplankton (belonging to the phyla Arthropoda and Rotifera),
 benthic macroinvertebrates (Platyhelmenthes, Annelida, Arthropoda, and
 Mollusca), and fish. Level of measurement: Minimum taxonomic resolution
 was at the genus level for fish and benthic macroinvertebrates and order
 level for zooplankton and microalgae.
description: # KF-metaweb: A trophic metaweb of freshwater ecosystems of South Korea
 (Version 1.0)
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gjbc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gjbc) This dataset contains two files. One is the dataset and another is R code to reproduce the result. The dataset contains trophic interactions about different organisms found in freshwater ecosystems of South Korea which includes: Microalgae (belongs to the phylum Cyanobacteria, Bygra, Cryophyta, Myozoa, Ochrophyta, Charophyta, Chlorophyta, Euglenozoa and Mycetozoa), Zooplanktons (belongs to the phylum Arthropoda and Rotifera), Benthic macroinvertebrates (represented by the phylum Platyhelmenthes, Annelida, Arthropoda and Mollusca) and Fishes. ## Description of the data and file structure The database (KF-metaweb) is available in the latest Excel Workbook (*.xlsx) format and includes four sheets: ‘Metaweb,’ ‘Node taxonomy,’ ‘Reference’ and ‘Trophic level.’ The first sheet contains the interactions among different nodes. It has three columns, i.e., ‘resource,’ ‘consumer’ and ‘reference.’ The first and second columns contain the names of the resource and consumer nodes, respectively, and the third column contains the source-to-source interaction as a reference number. The second sheet contains the names of all the nodes, along with their taxonomy. It has eight columns: ‘Node,’ ‘Genus,’ ‘Family,’ ‘Order,’ ‘Class,’ ‘Phylum,’ ‘Kingdom,’ and ‘Category.’ In the last column, the nodes are categorized into broad groups: macroinvertebrates (M), fish (F), microalgae (P), sponges (S), zooplankton (Z), detritus (D), and macrophytes (Mac). In the 'Node Taxonomy' sheet 'N/A' indicates 'Not Applicable'. The third sheet contains two columns: a reference number and a reference. The references used in the first sheet can be found in the third sheet using reference numbers. The last sheet, ‘Trophic Level’ contains the prey-averaged trophic level of each node. It contains two columns: ‘Node’ and ‘Trophic level.’ ## Sharing/Access information This database contains information not available in other existing databases, including global databases such as GloBI . Furthermore, this is the first metaweb from Asia of this kind that indicates its potential to fill critical gaps in understanding ecological interactions. Data are provided in Excel workbook format (*.xlsx), which can be easily converted into other formats such as *.csv and used with any software or programming language. This metaweb can be used to infer local webs for the region in which it is developed. From the inferred local webs, it is possible to understand how the network properties vary spatiotemporally. Furthermore, variations in spatiotemporal properties with environmental variables can be used to understand the influence of the environment on the structure of ecological networks. Further, it is important to note that many taxa are at the high taxonomic level like order or family in the database. Therefore, more focus will be to increase taxonomic resolution of the database in the later versions. Moreover, this metaweb contains two kinds of biases: (1) Taxonomic bias: Interactions of many nodes were inferred from higher taxonomic level understanding, which may not be the same in reality; (ii) Geographic bias: many data were taken beyond the geographic scope of this metaweb, those interactions might be unrealistic in many cases for the species with restricted geographic range fall under same genus. So, the metaweb should be used with caution to develop local web by keeping the possible biases in mind. The future version of this metaweb will be focused on to mitigate these two biases with increasing local data availability. Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data: * [https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24037764](https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24037764) Data was derived from the following sources: * A list of taxa was compiled from biomonitoring data from the Aquatic Ecosystem Survey and Health Assessment Method: Stream/River ([https://water.nier.go.kr](https://water.nier.go.kr)), which was collected from 2008 to 2021, covering 3032 sampling locations (National Institute of Environmental Research, 2019), and the Survey on the Environment and Ecosystem of Lakes (Wonju Regional Environmental Office, 2019, 2020, 2021). Additionally, a list of taxa was obtained from the National Ecosystem Survey ([https://nie-ecobank.kr](https://nie-ecobank.kr)), and unpublished data were collected from reservoirs following national data collection guidelines (MoE, 2017). * All the nodes were classified into five taxonomic hierarchies according to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF; [https://www](https://www). gbif. org/) backbone taxonomy: family, order, class, phylum, and kingdom. * Interactions for the nodes were collected from 730 different sources as indicated in the Reference column in the dataset. ## Code/Software The R code to analyse the data and reproduce the result is attached. All relevant information about the codes are freely available from the documentations of the package used or R help option. # Release note of v1.1 (Final_metawebv1.1.xlsx) Prey items for the node **Dytiscidae** was over-represented with all macroinvertebrates due to cross-referencing issues from secondary sources regarding reference **R092**. After checking, 207 additional links were removed which was added to the database by mistake.