Ecosystem age drives food web architecture of glacier retreat-formed fishless ponds in Greenland

Here, we studied the topology of food webs in newly created Arctic ponds formed by deglaciation, analyzing potential drivers such as environmental variables in 16 fishless ponds of contrasting ages (8 young, <50 years; 8 old, >150 years) located on the rapidly retreating west coast of Greenland. Using gut content analysis of zooplankton and benthic macroinvertebrates, we constructed food webs and examined how food web metrics related to pond age and environmental variables. We also tested for differences in beta diversity and nestedness of prey and consumers between pond age classes. In young ponds, food items of zooplankton and macroinvertebrates represented a subset of those found in old ponds. Food webs in old ponds exhibited higher taxonomic richness, greater linkage density, and lower connectance, indicating greater stability. Pond age was the main explanatory factor for most food web metrics, followed by productivity proxies (total nitrogen and phytoplankton chlorophyll-a). ..., Samples were obtained during a single survey of ponds located on the western coast of Greenland. Pond age was estimated at the landscape level using current and historical ice-sheet maps and aerial photographs measuring distance to the ice front, rather than at the level of individual systems. Half of the ponds (n = 8) were located in an area where the glacier had retreated within the past 50 years (“young ponds”), while the other half were situated in an area deglaciated for at least 150 years (“old ponds”).
Stomach contents of macroinvertebrates and zooplankton were analyzed to reconstruct food webs. Using the relative abundance of food items by taxon and by system, we built diet matrices for each pond (file: data1.csv) to calculate trophic network metrics (connectance, linkage density, and trophic niche overlap). For graphical representation of networks, we also constructed edge lists for each pond, where each row represents a trophic interaction from a consumer to a resource (file: ..., # Data from: Ecosystem age drives food web architecture of glacier retreat-formed fishless ponds in Greenland

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.n5tb2rc81](10.5061/dryad.n5tb2rc81)

## Description of the data and file structure

Samples were obtained during a single survey of ponds located on the western coast of Greenland. Pond age was estimated at the landscape level using current and historical ice-sheet maps and aerial photographs measuring distance to the ice front, rather than at the level of individual systems. Half of the ponds (n = 8) were located in an area where the glacier had retreated within the past 50 years (“young ponds”), while the other half were situated in an area deglaciated for at least 150 years (“old ponds”). Macroinvertebrates and zooplankton were sampled to reconstruct the food webs of each pond based on gut content analyses. These data were linked via GLMs to the ecosystem age and to morphometric and environmental variables. 

The datasheets correspond to:

1. A di...,