Ant_Plant_interaction_networks

Ant-plant interaction networks sampled in December 2010 and January 2011 within a grid system managed by the Brazilian Research Program in Biodiversity (PPBio) (9º48ʹS, 58º15ʹW, between 230 and 274 m a.s.l.). This grid is composed of sampling plots uniformly distributed between two parallel east-west trails 5 km in length, located 1 km apart (5 km2). A sampling plot of 250 x 30 m (7,500 m2) was established every km along each trail (12 plots total). At the local sampling scale, we subdivided each of the 12 plots into ten 25 x 30 m (750 m²) adjacent subplots. Within each interaction matrix, lines represent plant species and columns represent ant species in which elements Aij represent the number of interactions between ant species i and plant species j. The name of each file represents the number of the plot and the spatial class within each plot. For example, in file P1_0_25.txt, "P1" represents "Plot 1" and "0_25" represents that the interactions recorded within this matrix are located between the first 0 and 25 meters, while the file P1_total.txt represents all interactions records in "Plot 1" (from 0 to 250 meters ).