Data from: Ant community composition and functional traits in newly established grasslands within agricultural landscapes

Ongoing intensification and fragmentation of European agricultural landscapes dramatically reduce biodiversity and associated functions. Enhancing perennial non-crop areas holds great potential to support ecosystem services such as ant mediated pest control. To study the potential of newly established grassland strips to enhance ant diversity and associated functions, we used hand collection data and predation experiments to investigate differences in (a) ant community composition (b) biocontrol related functional traits, and (c) natural pest control across habitats in cereal fields, old grasslands, and new grassland transects of three years age. Whilst all data regarding biocontrol related functional traits of ant species (b) are available within the publication and its supporting information files, we provide here our raw data of ant species activity and diversity surveys (a) and further the results of sticky card experiments as a proxy for biocontrol potential (c).