Data for the article: Trophic positions of soil microarthropods in forests increase with elevation, but energy channels remain unchanged

Mountain forests are at risk as the consequences of climate change will likely lead to altered tree species boundaries. Characterizing food webs along elevation gradients in primary forests may help to predict the potential consequences of such changes, for example with regard to the decomposition of dead organic matter. Here, for the first time, we studied trophic variations in two species‐rich microarthropod taxa, Collembola and Oribatida, along an elevation gradient of primary forest at Changbai Mountain, China. Samples were taken at seven elevations of 150‐m elevational difference between 800 and 1700 m. At each elevation, Collembola and Oribatida were extracted from litter samples of eight subplots. We applied three state‐of‐the‐art methods to elucidate trophic positions and basal resource use at community level: Bulk stable isotope analysis of nitrogen (Δ15Nbulk) and carbon (Δ13Cbulk), compound‐specific stable isotope analysis of amino acids (CSIA‐AA), and dietary routing of neutr..., , , # Data for the article: Trophic positions of soil microarthropods in forests increase with elevation, but energy channels remain unchanged

Dataset Contributors:

Creators: Johannes Lux, Zhijing Xie, Xin Sun, Donghui Wu, Melanie M. Pollierer, Stefan Scheu

Date of issue: 2023-04-18

Corresponding author:

Name: Johannes Lux

E-mail: [e-mail]

Address: Untere Karspüle 2, Tierökologie, 37073 Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany

Funding:

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC; No. 31861133006-42071059) and the German Science Foundation (DFG; SCHE/376/42-1) in the framework of the Sino-German agreement between the DFG and the NSFC.

Dataset Metadata:

Date of data collection: 09-2019

Sampling Location: The northern slope of Changbai Mountain (42°8’25.4004”N, 128°7’36.2352”E), Jilin Province, China

Labratory work was conducted in the J.-F. Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göt...