1. Restoration of degraded landscapes has become increasingly important for conservation of species and their habitats owing to habitat destruction and rapid environmental change. An increasing focus for restoration activity are old-fields as agricultural land abandonment has expanded in the developed world. Studies examining outcomes of ecological restoration predominantly focus on vegetation structure and plant diversity, and sometimes vertebrate fauna. Fewer studies have systematically investigated effects of restoration efforts on soil chemical and biophysical condition or ground-dwelling invertebrates and there is limited synthesis of these data. 2. This dataset comprised data for a global meta-analysis of published studies to assess the effects on soil properties and invertebrates of restoring land that was previously used for agriculture. Studies were included if the site had been either cropped or grazed, restoration was either active (planting) or passive (abandonment, fencing) and if adequate data on soil chemical or physical properties or invertebrate assemblages were reported for restored, control (cropped/grazed) or reference sites. 3. The dataset includes 42 studies, published between 1994 and 2019 that met the inclusion criteria, covering 16 countries across all continents. More studies assessed passive restoration approaches than active planting, and native species were more commonly planted than exotic species.

The record contains information on beetle succession in decaying <i>Eucalyptus obliqua</i> logs, from 1999-2009. Data on beetle species identification, field sampling notes, and collection details from eucalyptus logs across the decade range from 1999 - 2009 are provided.

The dataset consists of results from two stream mesocosm experiments that were conducted in the summer-autumn of 1996 and 1997 to distinguish the influence of fine sediment loads and nutrient concentrations on benthic macro-invertebrate and algal communities. 11 biological variables were extracted from the results of this experiment and were standardized for the purpose of training neural networks that could be used to diagnose nutrient and fine sediment impacts in field surveys. The 11 variables were selected according to how well they correlated with the experimental treatment levels (high and low values of both nutrients and fine sediments). The 11 variables were: chlorophyll a (mg/m2), macro-invertebrate familial richness, total abundance, and the abundance of <em>Oligochaeta, Leptoperla varia (Gripopterygidae), Nousia spp. (Leptophlebiidae), Austrophlebioides spp. (Leptophlebiidae), Orthocladiinae, Tanypodinae, Tipulidae</em> and larval <em>Scirtidae</em>. These taxa were abundant within and among the stream mesocosm communities and are common in a wide range of Tasmanian rivers. Values for each of 11 biological response variables were standardized by dividing by their average value observed in the experimental controls mesocosm samples from that year. See Magierowski RH, Read SM, Carter SJB, Warfe DM, Cook LS, Lefroy EC, et al. (2015) <i>Inferring Landscape-Scale Land-Use Impacts on Rivers Using Data from Mesocosm Experiments and Artificial Neural Networks.</i> PLoS ONE 10(3): e0120901. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120901 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120901. This data was collected for the purpose of training artificial neural networks that could diagnose nutrient and sediment impacts in Tasmanian rivers. Each of the 11 variables were standardized by their average value observed in the experimental control samples from that year and some experimental treatment effects (Light) were ignored to simplify the neural network training process. Therefore, these data should not be used to make conclusions about the impacts of fine sediments and nutrients in Tasmanian rivers.

The record contains information on the moth assemblages at canopy and ground level at five sites within a 25 ha plot, at Robson Creek Site, Far North Queensland. Data on moth taxonomic information and the number of individuals sampled from the ground and canopy are provided for the sampling years, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

This dataset contains soil microbial and genomic analysis files of 9 soil samples from each of three plots at Fletcherview, Northern Queensland (NQ) processed by the <a href='https://agrf.org/'>Australian Genome Research Facility Ltd (AGRF) </a>. The files are available as compressed FastQ formatted sequence files.<br> For the nine Far North Queensland (FNQ) new plots (3 plots in Fletcherview and six plots at Wambiana), soil sampling additional to that done as component of plot installation by TERN have been undertaken. This is aligned with potential future exploratory work on soil eDNA proposed for WA. The protocol is a modified version of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s13742-016-0126-5">BASE sampling protocol</a>, combined with soil sampling as per <a href="https://www.tern.org.au/wp-content/uploads/TERN-Rangelands-Survey-Protocols-Manual_web.pdf">White et al. (2012)</a>. <br> DNA extracted from the soil samples and Metagenomics 10Gbp (giga base pairs) bundle as per AGRF protocol.

This data contains ant species abundance, richness and functional groups sampled across a time since fire chronosequence exceeding 300 years in non-resprouting <em>Eucalyptus salubris</em> woodlands.

This record is on the beetle survey conducted at the Warra Site, as part of the Southern Forests Experimental Forest Landscape (SFEFL). The data set contains information on beetle sample and species identification details, the number of individual specimens sampled, the age class of individuals and any relevant comments for each observation in the data set.

The dataset contains records of Robber Crab (<i>Birgus latro</i>) mortality across Christmas Island, including location co-ordinates and details of sex and thoracic length. To manage the impact of road mortality on the species, this monitoring project is designed to assess spatial variation in road mortality. Basic data are collected at the site (sex, size, date, coordinates).

The lesser hairy-footed dunnart (<i>Sminthopsis youngsoni, Dasyuridae</i>) is a generalist marsupial insectivore in arid Australia, but consumes wolf spiders (<i>Lycosa spp., Lycosidae</i>) disproportionately often relative to their availability. This project tested the hypothesis that this disproportionate predation is a product of frequent encounter rates between the interactants due to high overlap in their diets and use of space and time. This data set focuses on dietary overlap, with diet and predatory behaviour of wolf spiders (<i>Lycosa spp.</i>), the lesser hairy-footed dunnart (<i>Sminthopsis youngsoni</i>) and prowling spiders (<i>Miturga spp.</i>, which represent other common invertebrate predators) were determined by tracking individuals and directly observing prey captures. Seventeen wolf spiders, 10 prowling spiders and 5 dunnarts were captured from Main Camp site in the Simpson Desert, south-western Queensland during 2016 with 30, 13 and 13 direct prey captures witnessed for each species respectively. This data is used for calculating overlap between prey taxa and prey size between these predators using the symmetrical version of MacArthur and Levin's and Pianka's overlap equation. However, it can also be used as a case study for calculating overlap between other species-groups.

This data contains ant abundance and incidence collected in the core 1 ha plot within the Samford Peri-Urban site.