Abundant top predators increase species interaction network complexity in Northeastern Chinese forests

Species interactions remain a cornerstone in shaping community dynamics and structure, alongside other factors such as climate conditions and human activities. Although network structure is known to influence community stability and ecosystem functioning, the roles of top predators in shaping interaction network structure remain obscure. We examined a 5-7 year time series of species detections for mammal communities in multiple protected areas to investigate the association between top predators and interaction network structure. Our findings suggest that abundant species, day-active species and species with wide habitat breadth interact with more species, as did species that were more affected byvehicle disturbance. With increased densities of top predators, interaction networks exhibited greater complexity, with increased connectance, nestedness, and average degree. An increased density of mesopredators, such as yellow-throated martens andbadgers, was associated with sparser..., , , # Data from: Abundant top predators increase species interaction network complexity in Northeastern Chinese forests

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kd51c5bhq](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kd51c5bhq)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains the input data which was used to explore ecological interactions and network parameters, model fitting code and the random interaction networks with 16-18 species.

The dataset and model fitting code are available on **Zotero**.

### Files and variables

#### File: ran\_net\_attr\_18.csv

**Description:**  No unit (network attribute value)

##### Variables

* Network_ID: A unique identifier for each network.
* connectance: The connectance of the network, representing the fraction of possible connections that are actually realized.
* nestness: A measure of how nested the network is, indicating the degree to which species with fewer interactions are connected to those with more interactions.
* modularity: A measure of the...