Data from: Decreasing stoichiometric resource quality drives compensatory feeding across trophic levels in tropical litter invertebrate communities

Living organisms are constrained by both resource quantity and quality.
Ecological stoichiometry offers important insights into how the elemental
composition of resources affects their consumers. If resource quality
decreases, consumers can respond by shifting their body stoichiometry,
avoiding low-quality resources, or up-regulating feeding rates to maintain
the supply of required elements while excreting excess carbon (i.e.,
compensatory feeding). We analyzed multitrophic consumer body
stoichiometry, biomass, and feeding rates along a resource-quality
gradient in the litter of tropical forest and rubber and oil-palm
plantations. Specifically, we calculated macroinvertebrate feeding rates
based on consumer metabolic demand and assimilation efficiency. Using
linear mixed effects models, we assessed resource-quality effects on
macroinvertebrate detritivore and predator communities. We did not detect
shifts in consumer body stoichiometry or decreases in consumer biomass in
response to declining resource quality, as indicated by increasing
carbon-to-nitrogen ratios. However, across trophic levels, we found a
strong indication of decreasing resource quality leading to increased
consumer feeding rates through altered assimilation efficiency and
community body size structure. Our study reveals the influence of resource
quality on multitrophic consumer feeding rates and suggests compensatory
feeding to be more common across consumer trophic levels than was formerly
known.