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).

This data contains vegetation cover, ground cover, tree density and stand basal area data across a multi-century time-since-fire sequence derived from growth ring-size relationships in fire-sensitive <em>Eucalyptus salubris</em> woodlands.

The data set contains information on the soil water content at various depths in the Samford Ecological Research Facility (SERF), Samford Peri-Urban Site. Information on soil water content is provided from two sensors, i.e., 1) Sentek Solo, for high frequency sampling and 2) Sentek Diviner, for coarser resolution sampling.

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 lesser hairy­footed 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 overlap in the use of different microhabitats of wolf spiders (<i>Lycosa spp.</i>) and the lesser hairy­footed dunnart (<i>Sminthopsis youngsoni</i>) in the Simpson Desert, south­western Queensland Australia. Microhabitat use was determined by estimating the percentage cover of seven microhabitat variables and distance to nearest cover along trails left by individuals of each species­ group and a randomly orientated (control) trail for each actual trail as a measure of the availability of each microhabitat within the local environment. Trail length was also recorded and data was collected across 16 trapping grids at Main Camp during July and October (winter and Spring) in 2017. Differences in microhabitat use between trail types (actual vs control) and species (lycosids vs dunnarts) were assessed using non­metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and permutational analyses of variance (PERMANOVA). These analyses were performed using this data.

This data set is a collection of Highly Important Papers in Ecology (HIPE). Three files are included: VoteArticles.final.csv : a comma-delimited text file with the vote assessments on the relative quality of the submitted papers (Top 10, Between 11-25, Between 26-100 or Not in the top "100") and an indication of how well each voter knew the paper (Read it, Know it or Don't know it) HIP.refs.txt : tab-delimited text file with all paper bibliographic information citation.csv : a comma-delimited text file with the citation data (Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge) for each paper and each journal (Impact Factor).

The record contains information on litterfall data from four 1-hectare plots from the Great Western Woodlands site collected in 2014. Data on total litter weights from fifteen litter traps in each of four 1-ha study plots and crown canopy cover percent is provided.

This dataset contains the effect of stress and herbivory on the establishment of alternate provenances of a foundation tree species. This data relates to plant fitness and could be used for more broader studies in this area. We established a common garden experiment within a 238 ha restoration site owned and managed by the South Australian Water Corporation (SA Water), near the township of Clarendon (-35.0882°S, 138.6236°E). We grew ca.1500 seedlings sourced from one local and two non-local provenances of <i>Eucalyptus leucoxylon</i> to test whether local provenancing was appropriate. The three provenances spanned an aridity gradient, with the local provenance sourced from the most mesic area and the distant provenance sourced from the most arid. We explored the effect of provenance on four fitness proxies after 15 months, including survival, above-ground height, susceptibility to insect herbivory, and pathogen related stress.

The dataset accompanies the paper by Zemunik et al. (2015), which used the Jurien Bay dune chronosequence to investigate the changes in the community-wide suite of plant nutrient-acquisition strategies in response to long-term soil development. The study was located in the Southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot, in an area with an extremely rich regional flora. The dataset consists of both flora and soil data that not only allow all analyses presented in the paper (Zemunik et al. 2015) to be independently investigated, but also would allow further exploration of the data not considered or presented in the study. The study used a randomised stratified design, stratifying the dune system of the chronosequence into six stages, the first three spanning the Holocene (to ~6.5 ka) and oldest spanning soil development from the Early to Middle Pleistocene (to ~2 Ma). Floristic surveys were conducted in 60 permanent 10 m × 10 m plots (10 plots in each of six chronosequence stages). Each plot was surveyed at least once between August 2011 and March 2012, and September 2012. To estimate canopy cover and number of individuals for each plant species within the 10 m × 10 m plots, seven randomly-located 2 m × 2 m subplots were surveyed within each plot. Within each subplot, all vascular plant species were identified, the corresponding number of individuals was counted and the vertically projected vegetation canopy cover was estimated. Surface (0-20 cm) soil from each of the 420 subplots was collected, air dried and analysed at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, for a range of chemical and physical properties, the main ones of which were considered in this paper being total and resin soil phosphorus, total nitrogen and dissolved organic nitrogen, soil total and organic carbon, and pH (measured in H20 and CaCl2). However, other soil data are also presented in the dataset. Nutrient-acquisition strategies were determined from the literature, where known, and from mycorrhizal analyses of root samples from species with poorly known strategies. Most of the currently known nutrient-acqusition strategies were found in the species of the chronosequence. Previous studies in the Jurien Bay chronosequence have established that its soil development conforms to models of long-term soil development first presented by Walker and Syers (1976); the youngest soils are N-limiting and the oldest are P-limiting (Laliberté et al. 2012). However, filtering of the regional flora by high soil pH on the youngest soils has the strongest effect on local plant species diversity (Laliberté et al. 2014). <br></br> References: [1] Zemunik, G., Turner, B., Lambers, H. et al. Diversity of plant nutrient-acquisition strategies increases during long-term ecosystem development. Nature Plants 1, 15050 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.50 ; [2] T.W. Walker, J.K. Syers. The fate of phosphorus during pedogenesis Geoderma, 15 (1) (1976), pp. 1-19, 10.1016/0016-7061(76)90066-5 ; [3] Laliberté, E., Turner, B.L., Costes, T., Pearse, S.J., Wyrwoll, K.H., Zemunik, G. & Lambers, H. (2012); [3] Laliberté, E., Turner, B.L., Costes, T., Pearse, S.J., Wyrwoll, K.-H., Zemunik, G. and Lambers, H. (2012), Experimental assessment of nutrient limitation along a 2-million-year dune chronosequence in the south-western Australia biodiversity hotspot. Journal of Ecology, 100: 631-642. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2745.2012.01962.; [4] Laliberté E, Zemunik G, Turner BL. Environmental filtering explains variation in plant diversity along resource gradients. Science. 2014 Sep 26;345(6204):1602-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1256330.

This data contains the visual assessment of fuel layers in fire-sensitive <em>Eucalyptus salubris</em> woodlands using Vesta methods across 24 sites in a multi-century (10 to 260+ years since fire) time-since-fire sequence derived from growth ring-size relationships.