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 re..., 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.,