Traits of aphidophagous coccinellids and landscape variables

Coccinellids are important biocontrol agents and are threatened by agricultural intensification and landscape change. Their responses to the landscape are inconsistent, which may be due to a taxonomic focus of studies that misses the traits that drive the differences in species responses to the landscape. In this study, we investigated how coccinellids in alfalfa respond to environmental variables in terms of their traits. We examined five traits: body size, activity period, habitat specialization, spatial ubiquity and dispersal habits, and analysed how single and multiple traits (syndromes) are affected by local variables (aphid density), and landscape compositional (diversity of land uses) and configurational heterogeneity (edge density), at two spatial scales (500 and 1500 m). The community weighted mean of all traits, except body size, was affected by landscape heterogeneity, mostly at the smaller spatial scale. Coccinellid communities break into two groups of trait syndromes in the..., , # Traits drive responses of aphidophagous coccinellids communities to landscape complexity

Data files and variables

There are four data files:
DATA.500.cvs = is the untransformed data for environmental variables measured within a 500 m radius of sampled fields
DATA.1500.cvs = is untransformed data for environmental variables measured within a 1500 m radius of sampled fields
Traits.csv = Data of the traits for the 11 coccinellid species found in the study.
XYCOORD.csv = coordinates of each alfalfa field sampled.

**DATA.500.csv**
Untransformed data for environmental variables measured within a 500 m radius of sampled fields, showing de number of each sampled alfalfa field; the percentage of different cover types; variables of landscape heterogeneity; aphid density; community-weighted mean of coccinellid traits in each alfalfa field; and abundance of coccinellid species in each alfalfa field.

Columns:
Field = number of each alfalfa field where coccinellids were sampled
alfa = alfalfa (...,