Fungi and deadwood diversity: A test of the area-heterogeneity trade-off hypothesis

Environmental heterogeneity is one of the most fundamental drivers of species diversity. For decades, ecologists have suggested that heterogeneity-diversity relationships are generally positive. But today, a greater variety of heterogeneity-diversity relationships is discussed. In this study, we contrasted two hypotheses for wood-inhabiting fungi: The classical heterogeneity-diversity hypothesis, that predicts positive relationships due to an increase in niche dimensionality with increasing heterogeneity. And the more recently stated area-heterogeneity trade-off hypothesis, that predicts a unimodal pattern due to an inherent trade-off between the number of occupied niches and the effective area per species. It allows positive and negative relationships only as special cases.
We sampled 3,715 deadwood objects on 135 plots along a forest structure gradient in the Black Forest, Germany, and recorded 284 wood-inhabiting fungal species. To assess heterogeneity of deadwood structures, we calc..., , , # Fungi and deadwood diversity: A test of the area-heterogeneity trade-off hypothesis

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000bh](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000bh)

The dataset contains species diversity estimates, environmental variables, and a community matrix for 135 study plots. Species records of wood-inhabiting fungi are based on field surveys conducted in south-west Germany in 2020. 

## Description of the data and file structure

The plot-level dataset contains one row per study plot with species diversity estimates for wood-inhabiting fungi and environmental variables. A community matrix is also included. The abbreviations of the species diversity estimates and environmental variables are listed below. Further information on the study design, sampling method, and the calculation of the environmental variables 'structural richness' and 'structural divergence' is given in the associated manuscript.

##### Column names

Plot_ID: identifier for study plot

q0: species diver...