Experimental heatwaves and warming induce distinctive community responses through their interactions with a novel species

This repository provides the data for the manuscript "experimental heatwaves and warming induce distinctive community responses through their interactions with a novel species"

As the climate warms, species shift their distributions at different rates, re-organising ecological communities. The resulting novel interactions will shape the local community’s response to ongoing climate change. The distinction between extreme events and a rising mean temperature in driving range expansion of the neighbouring species has not been examined empirically, nor has the resulting ecological impact propagating through multi-trophic networks been addressed.

In this study, we recreated a high-elevation host-parasitoid community comprising Drosophila species and their associated parasitoid species from the Australian Wet Tropics, and subjected them to either heatwaves or warming in combination with the introduction of a low-elevation-specific Drosophila species. This dataset contains three groups of measurements:

1. Single-generation reproductive success of each species at various sampling times (about every 3 weeks) throughout the initiation and maintenance of the community.

2. Population size of each species before the community was terminated.

3. One-day reproductive success of each species before, during, and after the last heatwave event.