Do Tasmanian devil declines impact ecosystem function?

Tasmanian eucalypt forests are among the most carbon-dense in the world, but projected changes in climate could destabilize this critical carbon sink. While the impact of abiotic factors on forest ecosystem carbon dynamics have received considerable attention, biotic factors, such as the input of animal scat, are less understood. Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii)—an osteophageous scavenger that can ingest and solubilize nutrients locked in bone material—may subsidize plant and microbial productivity by concentrating bioavailable nutrients (e.g., nitrogen and phosphorus) in scat latrines. Dramatic declines in devil population densities are driven by the spread of a transmissible cancer and may have underappreciated consequences for soil organic carbon (SOC) storage and forest productivity by altering nutrient cycling. Here, we fuse experimental data and modeling to quantify and predict future changes to forest productivity and SOC under various climate and scat-quality futures. We ..., , , # Do Tasmanian devil declines impact ecosystem function?

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cc2fqz6d9](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cc2fqz6d9)

This dataset contains .lis DAYCENT output files for all present-day to 2100 (future) model runs (3 sites * 3 climate scenarios * 2 scat input qualities = 18 output files), which were used to generate Figure 4. Additionally, there are 3 .lis DAYCENT output files that represent historical land use (\"hlu\"), which were used to spin up DAYCENT models to the present day.
This dataset also contains soil nutrient and microbial community data used to generate figures 2 and 3 and raw microbial sequence data-Latrine_16S_Sequences.zip (demultiplexed) used for microbial community analyses.

## Description of the data and file structure

Soil chemistry data columns are as follows:

Columns A:E = sample ID information including treatment, replicate, and site. For this manuscript, site = \"Goulds Country\" corresponds to \"Eastern\", site = \"Arthur River\" corresponds...