Floral visitor species present in semiarid Ziziphus lotus scrublands (Habitat 5220*, EU) in the southeast of Iberian Peninsula

We sampled the insect assemblage visiting flowers in the arborescent scrublands with Ziziphus lotus (Habitat 5520*, Habitat Directive EU) in the semiarid southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly in Almería province (Andalucia, Spain). We selected 6 localities with the presence of this Ziziphus lotus habitat: i) 2 localities in habitat dominated by Ziziphus lotus individuals (ZIZ); ii) 2 localities in habitat dominated by Maytenus senegalensis with Ziziphus lotus (ZIZMAY); iii) 2 localities in habitat dominated by Chamaerops humilis with Ziziphus lotus (ZIZCHA). To study the community of insect floral visitors in these habitats, 6-7 transects of [50 m x 2 m] were defined in each locality, which were sampled by 50 min-censuses from February-July at 3 different times (pre-spring + spring + summer; total transects sampled = 38 transects x 3 censuses = 114 transects). The sampled transects were randomly distributed, trying to cover the largest possible area within each locality to avoid sampling bias. We recorded the insect community visiting flowers in terms of richness and abundance per transect and locality. The censuses were carried out on sunny days with low winds (<12Km/h), between 9:00-17:00, during the period of maximum insect activity. The diversity and abundance of insect floral visitor by transect were pooled by population/locality ('SUMMARY_Floral_visitors_pop.csv' file). Rarefaction curves were used to calculate the diversity estimates per locality showed in 'Population_and_sampling_info.csv' file (n for rarefaction curves per population = minimum number of sampled transects per population across season x 2 = 18 x 2 = 36 sample units). iNEXT package (Hsieh, Ma and Chao, 2020) of R sofware (R Core, 2021) was used to calculated the summaries and diversity stimates showed in .csv files