Contrasting effects of deadwood and gaps on the trophic structure of forest soil microarthropods

Understanding the mechanisms driving forest biodiversity is challenging, especially in soil. Trophic niche is the most important perspective to understand how biodiversity changes with disturbances. Deadwood input and gap formation are major disturbances resulting from tree mortality. Both alter the ecological niches of forest organisms, yet their individual and interactive effects on soil animals remain unclear. Trophic diversity, i.e., the area of trophic niches occupied by organisms, links to the resource processing within food webs and, consequently, to ecosystem functions. Changes in the trophic diversity of Collembola communities may result from both changes in species composition and from trophic shifts of individual species. To investigate how the trophic structure of soil fauna responds to forest disturbances, we examined trophic niches of Collembola across three regions in Germany, as influenced by deadwood addition and gap formation using stable isotope analysis (13C, 15N). C..., , # Contrasting effects of deadwood and gaps on the trophic structure of forest soil microarthropods

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.pvmcvdp0d](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pvmcvdp0d)

## General information

Authors:Yan Zhang, André Junggebauer, Melanie M. Pollierer, Stefan Scheu, Zheng Zhou

**Contact information:**

Date created by: Yan Zhang
Affiliations: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Goettingen
Date created at: 2025/01/07
Dates of data collection: April-October 2024
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])
location: Germany

**Methodology used**

Trophic niches are indicated by 13C and 15N, and trophic diversity is indicated by the area of 13C and 15N, using bulk stable isotopes.

# Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

1.data_for_r_script_isotope_Collembola.csv: stable isotope data of Collembola in each site, each treatment. The data has been cleaned by filtering the N amount ...,