WelshStreams {econullnetr}

Part of the food web from upland streams in south Wales, UK

Description

Part of a food web from upland streams in south Wales, UK, comprising 85 individuals of two macroinvertebrate predator species (the caddisfly Rhyacophila dorsalis and the stonefly Dinocras cephalotes). Data were collected in Dec 2013 from six streams spread across an agricultural intensity gradient as part of a wider study (Pearson et al. 2018). The data comprise presence or absence of predation by each predator on 16 potential prey taxa determined using next generation sequencing of predator gut contents. There are three accompanying data sets:

1. WelshStreams.prey, which gives the mean abundance of each prey taxon in each of the six streams (counts of individuals from 3–min kick samples)

2. WelshStreams.fl which specifies forbidden links (one forbidden link for each predator species, ruling out cannibalism)

3. WelshStreams.order which ranks the 16 prey taxa in taxonomic order according to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology's Coded Macroinvertebrate List. This is used for plotting the results.

Usage

WelshStreams

Format

A data frame with 85 rows and 18 variables. Each row represents the gut contents of an individual predator. The first column Stream indicates which of the six streams each predator was collected from, whilst the second column indicates which genus the predator belonged to (Dinocras or Rhyacophila). The remaining 16 columns represent the potential prey taxa, which were either predated (1) or not (0) by each individual predator.

Source

Pearson, C.E., Symondson, W.O.C., Clare, E.L., Ormerod, S.J., Iparraguirre Bolanos, E. & Vaughan, I.P. (2018) The effects of pastoral intensification on the feeding interactions of generalist predators in streams. Molecular Ecology, 27, 590-602.