Data from: Remotely sensed environmental data as ecological proxies for ground-dwelling ant diversity along a subtropical forest succession gradient

Dataset of the publication - "Remotely Sensed Environmental Data as Ecological Proxies for Ground-Dwelling Ant Diversity along a Subtropical Forest Succession Gradient". The dataset contains three CSV files: a species community data, species trait data, and remotely sensed variables. For the species community data, ground-dwelling ant fauna was collected using pitfall traps along the vegetation successional gradient in Hong Kong SAR. A total of 80 sites, including 15 grasslands, 21 shrublands, and 44 secondary forests, were sampled from 2015 to 2017. A total of 141 species, belonging to 55 genera, were recorded. For the species trait data, we measured body size and six other commonly used ecological traits, including eye length, leg length, head width, antennae length, clypeus length, and mandible length, to estimate the multidimensional trait space of ant communities along the forest successional gradient. An average of five randomly selected worker individuals were measured per species (mean ± SD: 4.83 ± 1.28). Lastly, for remotely sensed variables, vegetation structural metrics and topographic metrics were derived from airborne LiDAR data collected in 2010, as well as anthropogenic fire history detected from aerial photos. Vegetation structural metrics include canopy cover, mean vegetation height, vertical distribution ratio, understory cover, mean understory height, coefficient of variation of canopy height, and standard deviation of vertical distribution ratio. Topographic metrics include elevation, insolation, and topographic wetness index. For details about the method of data collection, please refer to the publication.