Tropical ant communities under agroforestry can be diverse but lack trait-and-environment associations

Human landuse often alters community composition that affects many related ecosystem functions. However, intermediate-intensity landuse, such as agroforestry, can be a refuge for biodiversity and can maintain ecosystem functions and services in working landscapes. We quantified how the alpha and beta diversity of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) vary with human landuse in the Kodagu region of the Western Ghats, India, across four landuse types (forests, forest fragments, and two types of coffee plantations with either native or non-native shade trees). We studied ants, as they perform a wide range of ecological functions such as predation, herbivory, seed dispersal, decomposition, etc. in such landscapes. We also assessed the functional diversity of ants and estimated the interactions between their traits and the environment. We found that the plantations, on average, had 26% lower species richness than forests and forest fragments, and functional richness was 31% lower in non-native plan..., , # Tropical ant communities under agroforestry can be diverse but lack trait-and-environment associations

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.xd2547dtt](10.5061/dryad.xd2547dtt)

## Description of the data and file structure

Dryad_data.xlsx: contains the data on the abundances of ants found across land use.

* **sp-site**: contains the species by site matrix of ant abundances across the four different land uses.
* The column *landuse* indicates the landuse of the site- Forest (fr), Fragment (fg), Native shaded coffee (Native/ns), Non-native shaded coffee (Non-native/si). 
* The column *Transect* indicates the transect number in the respective site.
* The columns (D - DA) represent the species (refer to *sp-trait* of the data or S1 for the abbreviated species names)

- **sp-trait**: contains the species by trait matrix of the species along with the species code and the scientific name.
* The traits include Weber’s length, head length, eye width, scape length, femur length, spines, work...,