Hydroperiod and functional dispersion (birds, plants and aquatic macroinvertebrates) in the Prairie Pothole Region of Alberta

We provide both data and R Code.The data provide the functional dispersion for birds(y2), plants (y1) and aquatic macroinvertebrates (y2) and pond permanence in wetlands surveyed between 2013-2014 in the Prairie Pothole Region of southern Alberta. To measure the functional dispersion of each taxon, we used Rao’s quadratic entropy, which does use the weighted mean distance of each species to the group centroid, where weights are based on species relative abundances. We used four proxies for wetland pond permanence, and these include approximate number of days a wetland contained water(x1), maximum water depth observed during the survey period(x2), ratio of water amplitude (i.e., maximum – minimum observed water depths) to maximum depth (x3), and an index of evaporative losses to the atmosphere relative to water inputs based on stable isotopes analysis (x4). We relativized both the biological and ponded permanence variables by dividing each cell by the column maximum.The provided code details how we constructed structural equation models using these data.

本数据集同时提供原始数据与R代码。本研究于2013至2014年间，对阿尔伯塔南部草原坑洼区（Prairie Pothole Region）的湿地开展调查，所提供的数据包含该区域内鸟类（y2）、植物（y1）以及水生大型无脊椎动物（y2）的功能离散度，以及湿地驻留持久性相关数据。为测算各分类群的功能离散度，本研究采用了劳氏二次熵（Rao’s quadratic entropy）指标，该指标通过计算各物种到类群质心的加权平均距离实现，权重基于物种的相对多度。针对湿地驻留持久性，本研究设置了四类替代指标：分别为湿地持水天数近似值（x1）、调查期内观测到的最大水深（x2）、水幅差（即观测到的最大与最小水深之差）与最大水深的比值（x3），以及基于稳定同位素分析得到的、相对水体输入量的大气蒸发损失指数（x4）。本研究通过将每个单元格数值除以列最大值的方式，对生物学变量与湿地驻留持久性变量均进行了标准化处理。所提供的R代码详细说明了如何基于本数据集构建结构方程模型（structural equation models）。