Data from: Multi-driver and multi-scale assessment of vine community structure and composition across a complex tropical environmental matrix

Ecological communities are structured by multiple processes operating at
multiple scales yet understanding the scale-dependency of these processes
remains an open challenge. This might be particularly true for parasites,
for which biotic rather than abiotic processes may play a primary role in
structuring communities. Focusing on vines, a group of structural
parasites that gain access to the canopy using different climbing
mechanisms, we examined the influence of abiotic factors in tandem with
host-parasite and parasite-parasite interactions in the assembly of
tropical vine communities. Two synthetic variables, namely Climate1 and
landscape Variety, were consistently important in explaining variation in
species richness and diversity, as well as species composition, but their
importance varied with scale. Whereas Climate1 summarizes the largest
variability among climatic variables, landscape Variety expresses
landscape heterogeneity within a neighborhood. Significant patterns of
species co-occurrences suggest that vine-vine interactions also contribute
to vine community assembly. Our results may be critical to understand vine
proliferation and help design management strategies for their control.