Data from: Relating trophic resources to community structure: a predictive index of food availability

The abundance and the distribution of trophic resources available for
consumers influence the productivity and the diversity of natural
communities. Nevertheless, assessment of the actual abundance of food
items available for individual trophic groups has been constrained by
differences in methods and metrics used by various authors. Here we
develop an index of food abundance, the framework of which can be adapted
for different ecosystems. The relative available food index (RAFI) is
computed by considering standard resource conditions of a habitat and the
influence of various generalized anthropogenic and natural factors. RAFI
was developed using published literature on food abundance and validated
by comparison of predictions versus observed trophic resources across
various marine sites. RAFI tables here proposed can be applied to a range
of marine ecosystems for predictions of the potential abundance of food
available for each trophic group, hence permitting exploration of
ecological theories by focusing on the deviation from the observed to the
expected.