Consumer biodiversity increases organic nutrient availability across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems

Human land-use intensification threatens arthropod (e.g., insect and spider) biodiversity across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Insects and spiders play critical roles in ecosystems by accumulating and synthesizing organic nutrients like polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). However, links between biodiversity and nutrient content of insect and spider communities have yet to be quantified. We relate insect and spider richness to biomass and PUFA-mass from stream and terrestrial communities encompassing nine land-uses. PUFA-mass and biomass relate positively to biodiversity cross ecosystems. In terrestrial systems, human-dominated areas have lower biomass and PUFA-mass than more natural areas, even at equivalent levels of richness. Aquatic ecosystems have consistently higher PUFA mass than terrestrial ecosystems. Our findings reinforce the importance of conserving biodiversity and highlight unique benefits of aquatic biodiversity.This is all of the data and code required to reproduce the analyses. The repository doesn't allow specific folder structures, but the data should ideally be organized into folders organized and named as follows - 1_raw_data/├─ bdm_data/│ ├─ bdm_families_list.csv├─ pufa_concentration_data/│ ├─ Literature_estimates/│ │ ├─ Literature_estimates.xlsx│ ├─ Margaux_PUFA_Conc/│ │ ├─ 2a.Lunz 2019_FA_InsectTransfer - Content.xlsx│ │ ├─ 3a.Lunz 2019_FA_InsectConsu - Content.xlsx│ ├─ Martin_Creuzberg_PUFA_Conc/│ │ ├─ all_STOTEN.xlsx│ ├─ Tarn_PUFA/│ │ ├─ Mindelsee_FA.xlsx├─ wsl_data/2_modified_data/├─ terr_insects_nutrients_null.rds├─ aq_insect_nutrients_null.rds├─ aquatic.data.rds├─ terrestrial_data.rds├─ insect_data/│ ├─ aq_insect_regressions.rds│ ├─ te_insect_regressions.rds├─ null_models/│ ├─ aquatic_habitat_all.rds│ ├─ terrestrial_habitat_all.rds3_r_scripts/├─ Diversity_Analaysis.rmd├─ Null_models.rmd├─ Nutrient_content.rmd├─ Scaling_relationships.rmd