Long-term responses to large-scale disturbances: Spatiotemporal variation in gastropod populations and communities

The Anthropocene is characterized by complex, primarily human-generated, disturbance regimes that include combinations of long-term press (e.g. climate change, pollution) and episodic pulse (e.g. cyclonic storms, floods, wildfires, land use change) disturbances. Within any regime, disturbances occur at multiple spatial and temporal scales, creating complex and varied interactions that influence spatiotemporal dynamics in the abundance, distribution, and biodiversity of organisms. Moreover, responses to disturbance are context-dependent, with the legacies of previous disturbances affecting responses to ensuing perturbations. We use three decades of annual data to evaluate the effects of repeated pulse disturbances and global warming on gastropod populations and communities in Puerto Rico at multiple spatial scales. More specifically, we quantify (1) the relative importance of large-scale and small-scale aspects of disturbance on variation in abundance, biodiversity, and species compositi..., See main paper as well as links in README file for details on data collection., The data files can be opened with excel or any program that can read csv formats.