Data from: Biogeographical variation in termite distributions alters global deadwood decay

Fungus-growing termites (subfamily Macrotermitinae) have a distinct
geographical distribution, found only in the old-world tropics. Where
present, they are considered to be major contributors and regulators of
decomposition, with consumption rates often greater than other termite
groups. This study sought to understand the relative roles of termite
distribution (specifically the presence or absence of fungus-growing
termites) and climatic variables (mean annual temperature, mean annual
precipitation and mean annual aridity) on global patterns in deadwood
decay. To answer this question, we added new salient data to an existing
dataset on global wood decay by Zanne et al. (2022) available
at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19920416.v1. We filtered
the data to only include sites where termites were present and thus
analysed a dataset containing 102 sites across 16 countries. We found that
termite-driven decay of deadwood increased with aridity but was higher in
sites with fungus-growing termites than sites without fungus-growing
termites. Our results also showed that the relative role of fungus-growing
termites increased with aridity, as rates of wood-discovery by termites
increased with aridity but only in sites where fungus-growing termites
were present. Our findings indicate that the inclusion of biogeographical
differences in termite distribution could potentially alter global
estimates of deadwood turnover. This repository contains new datasets on
termite-driven deadwood decay of Pinus radiata wood blocks and code used
for all data analyses and production of figures.