Prescribed fire affects arthropod occupancy of wood cavities in a temperate deciduous forest

Prescribed fire is an important management tool that affects the availability and quality of resources for arthropods in temperate deciduous forests. We quantified occupancy of wood cavities by arthropods within burned and unburned portions of a temperate deciduous forest in the eastern United States.  We placed 400 wood blocks (4.0 x 4.5 x 25 cm) on the forest floor at each site.  Each block had either one 10mm diameter cavity or two 5mm diameter cavities drilled 8 cm deep into its ends.  We collected the contents of the cavities over a 5-month period immediately following the burn and again two years post-burn. Arthropod occupancy was higher in the burned site (37% ± 4%) vs. the unburned site (17% ± 3%) immediately following the fire, but converged on similar frequency after two years (26% ± 3% and 28% ± 3%, respectively). Ants, spiders, and the cockroach Parcoblatta pennsylvanica (De Geer, 1773) were the most common cavity occupants. There was a tendency for ants ..., , # Data from: Prescribed fire affects arthropod occupancy of wood cavities in a temperate deciduous forest

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.hqbzkh1wj](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hqbzkh1wj)

## Description of the data and file structure

#### File: Wood_cavity_data.csv

**Description:** raw data for arthropod occupancy of cavities in experimental wood blocks

##### Variables

* collection_date: Date at which block cavity contents were collected (mm/dd/yy)
* block_number: Unique numerical identifier assigned to each block
* status: Status of forest (Burned or Unburned)
* collection_number: Month that block was collected (1=May; 2=June; 3=July; 4=August; 5=September)
* cavity_size: Size of cavity drilled into block (5 or 10 mm)
* order: Arthropod Order (e.g., Hymenoptera)
* family: Insect Family (e.g., Formicidae)
* functional_guild: guild classification for block occupant (e.g., spider, ant, wasp/bee)
* species: Occupant species name
* occupied: Binary classification of block occupancy (1=o..., ,