Data for: Rewilding soil and litter invertebrates and fungi increases decomposition rates and alters detritivore communities

Habitat degradation and associated reductions in ecosystem functions can be reversed by reintroducing or ‘rewilding’ keystone species. Rewilding projects have historically targeted restoration of processes such as grazing regimes or top-down predation effects. Few projects focus on restoring decomposition efficiency, despite the pivotal role decomposition plays in global carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling. Here, we tested whether rewilding entire communities of detritivorous invertebrates and fungi can improve litter decomposition efficiency and restore detritivore communities during ecological restoration. Rewilding was conducted by transplanting leaf litter and soil, including associated invertebrate and fungal communities from species-rich remnant sites into species-poor, and geographically isolated, revegetated farmland sites in a temperate woodland region of southeastern Australia. We compared communities in sites under the following treatments: remnant (conservation area an..., This dataset is part of a long term study, examining the effect of litter and soil transplants on invertebrates and microbes. To process invertebrate detritivores, we took litter samples and ran them through tullgren funnels at 3 different time points after the initial litter and soil transplants. To process fungal saprotrophs, we took soil samples in conjuction with the invertebrate samples. All steps in data processing are listed in the 'code.R' file., , # Data for: Rewilding soil and litter invertebrates and fungi increases decomposition rates and alters detritivore communities

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ncjsxkt1r](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ncjsxkt1r)

This dataset contains a suite of environmental measurements, decomposition measurements, and community matrices for invertebrate and fungal detritivores. Data were collected at four time points, once pre-rewilding, and three times post-rewilding. We found that rewilding detritivore communities via soil and litter transplants increased the number of invertebrate detritivores, which had cascading effects on decomposition rates.

## Description of the data and file structure

The dataset contains various .csv files that link to the `code.R` file. Within the `code.R` file, there are lines of codes that detail the analyses of each figure in the manuscript.

Metadata for field sites can be found in the `metadata.csv` file, which documents geographic location of each site in WGS 84.

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