Habitat fragmentation drives pest termite risk in humid but not arid biomes

Predicting global change effects poses significant challenges due to the intricate interplay between climate change and anthropogenic stressors in shaping ecological communities and their function, such as pest outbreak risk. Termites are ecosystem engineers, yet some pest species are causing worldwide economic losses. While habitat fragmentation seems to drive pest-dominated termite communities, its interaction with climate change effect remains unknown. We test if climate and habitat fragmentation interactively alter interspecific competition that may limit pest termite risk. Leveraging global termite cooccurrence including 280 pest species, we found that competitively superior termite species (e.g. large-bodied) increased in large and continuous habitats solely at high precipitation. While competitive species suppressed pest species globally, habitat fragmentation drove pest termite risk only in humid biomes. Unfortunately, humid tropics have experienced vast forest fragmentation and..., , , # Habitat fragmentation drives pest termite risk in humid but not arid biomes

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mdt](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mdt)

## Description of the data and file structure

We provided the checklist of coocurring termite species at local scale ('Checklist of Isoptera in local haitats.xlsx') and at oceanic-island scale ('Checklist of Isoptera on global islands.xlsx'), which included the original records of species distribution per site, the environmental attributes and spatial coordinates per site, and the full reference list from which the distribution records were extracted.

We also provided the functional trait information for each studied species ('Species list and traits.xlsx'). For morpho-species, we calculated the mean trait values of intrageneric species as the estimate. Trait description and reference source were also reported. For body size, we plotted the correlation of body size between soldier and imago caste, which was significantly pos...