Data from: Detailed food web networks of three Greater Antillean coral reef systems: the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica

Food webs represent one of the most complex aspects of community biotic
interactions. Complex food webs are represented as networks of
interspecific interactions, where nodes represent species or groups of
species, and links are predator-prey interactions. This paper presents
reconstructions of coral reef food webs in three Greater Antillean regions
of the Caribbean: the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica. Though not
taxonomically comprehensive, each food web nevertheless comprises
producers and consumers, single-celled and multicellular organisms, and
species foraging on reefs and adjacent seagrass beds. Species are grouped
into trophic guilds if their prey and predator links are
indistinguishable. The data list guilds, taxonomic composition, prey
guilds/species, and predators. Primary producer and invertebrate richness
are regionally uniform, but vertebrate richness varies on the basis of
more detailed occurrence data. Each region comprises 169 primary
producers, 513 protistan and invertebrate consumer species, and 159, 178,
and 170 vertebrate species in the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica,
respectively. Caribbean coral reefs are among the world's most
endangered by anthropogenic activities. The datasets presented here will
facilitate comparisons of historical and regional variation, the
assessment of impacts of species loss and invasion, and the application of
food webs to ecosystem analyses.