Data for: Whole-of-community invertebrate rewilding: Leaf litter transplants rapidly increase beetle diversity during restoration

Restoration of degraded areas is now a central tool in humanity’s response to continued species loss. However, restoration projects often report exceedingly slow or failed recolonization of fauna, especially dispersal-constrained groups such as invertebrates. Active interventions via reintroducing or “rewilding” invertebrates may assist recolonization and speed up the restoration of communities towards a desired target. However, invertebrate rewilding is rarely implemented during ecological restoration. Here, we studied the efficacy of invertebrate rewilding as a means of improving diversity and compositional similarities to remnant communities during restoration. Rewilding was conducted by transplanting leaf litter and soil, including associated communities of invertebrates from species-rich remnant sites into species-poor and geographically isolated revegetated farmland sites. We sampled pre- and post-rewilding invertebrate communities in remnant, rewilded revegetation, and control revegetation sites. Our data contains mesoinvertebrate (<5mm in size) community samples from 6 sites within each of our 3 treatments. We took 8 subsamples measuring 25 cm by 25 cm containing the entire mesoinvertebrate leaf litter community from each site across 4 different seasons. The first season was a pre-treatment baseline measurement and was taken in November 2018. Thereafter, we sampled 7-, 18-, and 27- months post-rewilding. Our data contains a range of traits for each morphospecies (Size in mm, trophic group, and whether they were winged or flightless) and two environmental variables measured at each site (Volumetric water content and elevation). We included these for our Hierarchical Modelling of Species Community (HMSC) approach to determine whether biological properties of species or environmental variables were driving species distributions. Beetle (Coleoptera) morphospecies richness increased rapidly in rewilded sites and was indistinguishable from remnant communities as early as 7 months post-rewilding. Beetle community similarity in the rewilding sites significantly deviated from the control sites 27 months post-rewilding, however, remnant communities remained distinct over the study timeframe. Establishment success varied as other taxa did not respond as consistently as beetles within the study timeframe. Our results demonstrate that the relatively simple act of transplanting leaf litter can result in comparatively large increases in morphospecies richness during restoration in a short timeframe.

Methods
We collected eight 25 cm by 25 cm subsamples of leaf litter from each site in each sampling session. We ran the leaf litter through Tullgren funnels to extract the entire community, which was then sorted into morphospecies for community analyses.

退化区域的生态修复现已成为人类应对持续物种丧失的核心手段。然而，多数修复项目常面临动物类群定殖速度极慢甚至定殖失败的困境，尤以扩散受限的类群如无脊椎动物(Invertebrates)为典型。通过重新引入或“野化(Rewilding)”无脊椎动物的主动干预手段，或可助力定殖进程，加速群落修复至预期目标。但在生态修复实践中，无脊椎动物野化方案极少得到应用。本研究旨在评估无脊椎动物野化手段在修复过程中提升群落多样性及与原生剩余群落(Remnant Communities)组成相似性的效果。本次野化操作通过移植枯落物与土壤（携带有与之共生的无脊椎动物群落），从物种丰富的原生剩余样地转移至物种匮乏且地理隔离的植被恢复农田样地来完成。我们分别在原生剩余样地、野化植被恢复样地与对照植被恢复样地中，对野化前后的无脊椎动物群落开展了采样。本数据集包含3种处理组（每组6个样地）的中型无脊椎动物(MesoInvertebrate，体长<5mm)群落采样样本。我们在4个不同季节中，从每个样地采集8个25cm×25cm的子样本，覆盖该样地全部中型无脊椎动物枯落物群落。首个采样季为处理前基线调查，于2018年11月开展；后续分别在野化后7个月、18个月及27个月进行采样。本数据集包含每个形态种(Morphospecies)的一系列性状数据（体长/mm、营养类群、是否具翅/无翅），以及每个样地的两项环境变量数据（体积含水量与海拔高度）。我们借助物种群落分层建模(Hierarchical Modelling of Species Community, HMSC)方法，利用上述数据探究物种生物学属性或环境变量是否为物种分布的驱动因子。研究结果显示，在野化样地中，甲虫(Coleoptera)类群的形态种丰富度快速提升，且在野化后7个月即可达到与原生剩余样地无显著差异的水平。野化样地的甲虫群落组成相似性在野化后27个月时显著偏离对照样地，但原生剩余样地的群落组成在整个研究周期内始终保持独特性。其他类群的定殖响应并未如甲虫类群般一致，因此定殖成功率存在差异。本研究结果表明，仅通过移植枯落物这一相对简易的操作，即可在较短修复周期内大幅提升群落的形态种丰富度。

方法
在每次采样中，我们从每个样地采集8个25cm×25cm的枯落物子样本。将采集的枯落物通过Tullgren漏斗（陶尔格林漏斗）进行全群落提取，随后将提取的生物按形态种分类，用于后续群落分析。