Effects of leaf litter traits on terrestrial isopod and millipede consumption, assimilation and growth

Nutrient cycling through leaf litter consumption is an essential ecological function performed by macrodetritivorous invertebrates such as isopods and millipedes. Leaf litter consumption rates can vary greatly depending on the environment, consumer identity, and litter traits, but generalizations about the effects of plant traits on macrodetritivore leaf litter consumption, assimilation and growth are not well established and mostly indirectly inferred.
We conducted a systematic search of the global literature and obtained 456 standardized measures from laboratory experiments of relative consumption (RCR), assimilation (RAR) and growth (RGR) rates of terrestrial isopods and millipedes, extracted from 56 different articles. We investigated if commonly measured leaf traits, plant functional groups, prior microbial conditioning of leaves, and climatic conditions affected these rates. We obtained data on commonly measured leaf traits from the TRY global plant trait database, inferred plant..., We searched in Scopus for all peer-reviewed scientific articles published in English up to October 2023 whose titles, keywords or abstract met the search criteria defined by the Boolean expression: “(isopod* OR millipede OR diplopod* OR ((pill OR sow) AND bug) OR (wood AND (louse OR lice))) AND (feed* OR fed OR consum* OR ingest* OR assimil* OR grow*) AND (rate* OR efficiency)”. This search resulted in 785 articles (see Fig. S1 for the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses [PRISMA] diagram). However, some ecological papers that measured the relevant rates but used highly generalizable terminology in titles, abstracts and keywords could not be discovered by this search methodology. We thus added to this collection 17 additional articles identified through our knowledge of the literature, references made by other studies, or identified by data contributors and reviewers. We then manually screened each article and looked for data on RCR, RAR and RGR that were e..., , # Effects of leaf litter traits on terrestrial isopod and millipede consumption, assimilation and growth

Dataset of relative consumption (RCR), assimilation (RAR) and growth (RGR) rates of terrestrial isopods and millipedes feeding on leaf litter, compiled from 56 published articles.

## Description of the data and file structure

Data file contains the following columns:

* Article: Citation in author(s) year format
* Location: City and country from which isopods/millipedes and leaf litter were collected
* Lat/Lon: coordinates (units: degrees) of location from which isopods/millipedes and leaf litter were collected. Most are best guess locations based on verbal descriptions reported in studies.
* Temperature: experiment temperature (units: degrees Celsius) at which experiment was conducted. Mean of day/night temperatures, if these were different in an experiment.
* Consumer_sp. Consumer_group, Consumer_family: Species, higher order classification (Isopoda or Diplopoda), an...