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).