Functional traits—not nativeness—shape the effects of large mammalian herbivores on plant communities

Large mammalian herbivores (megafauna) have experienced extinctions and declines since prehistory. Introduced megafauna have partly counteracted these losses yet are thought to have unusually negative effects compared to native megafauna. Using a meta-analysis of 3,995 plot-scale plant abundance and diversity responses from 221 studies, we found no evidence that megafauna impacts were shaped by nativeness, ‘invasiveness’, ‘feralness’, coevolutionary history, or functional and phylogenetic novelty. Nor was there evidence that introduced megafauna facilitate introduced plants more than native megafauna. Instead, we found strong evidence that functional traits shaped megafauna impacts, with larger-bodied and bulk-feeding megafauna promoting plant diversity. Our work suggests that trait-based ecology provides better insight into interactions between megafauna and plants than concepts of nativeness., Literature screening and digitization
This meta-analysis was part of a larger effort to understand megafauna impacts on multiple facets of ecosystems (e.g. including soil nutrients, invertebrates, etc). This ensured that the dataset included plant responses that were also measured in studies focused on other response variables (e.g., spider diversity). We searched Web of Science with a string of search terms that included the common names and Latin genera of all terrestrial mammalian megafauna species (common names from HerbiTraits v1.2 (Lundgren et al. 2021)) separated with an ‘OR’ operand, along with the following search terms: “disturb*, graz*, brows*, impact*, effect, affect, disrupt, facilitate, invasi*, ecosystem*, vegetat*, plant*, fauna*, reptil*, amphib*, bird*, rodent*, fish*, invertebrat*, insect*, soil*, carbon, climate, albedo, river*, riparian, desert*, forest*, tundra, decomposition, grassland*, savanna*, chaparral, scrub, shrub, diversity, heterogeneity, extinction, rich..., R version 4.2.1 as well as a variety of packages, including data.table, metafor, multcomp, ggplot2, broom, tidyr, and dplyr., # Data for Functional traits - not nativeness - shape the effects of large mammalian herbivores on plant communities

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This dataset consists of meta-analytic data on plant diversity and abundance responses to mammalian megafauna (>45 kg). This data can be used (as in manuscript) to assess whether there are differences between introduced and native megafauna in their effects on plants and to assess how megafauna functional traits, environmental variables, and so on, influence megafauna effects on plants.

## Description of the Data and file structure

This repository includes the following data files. Note that NA and blank cells are considered equivalent in all csv files.
'Plant_Abundance.csv' = Each row is an observed effect of megafauna on plant abundance.

'Plant_Diversity.csv' = Each row is an observed effect of megafauna on plant diversity. This dataset and 'Plant_Abundance.csv' have the same columns but are separated for convenience.

'Model_Comparison_Guide.csv' = This dat...