Counts of oribatid mites in sphagnum mosses

In June 1989, 70 cores of Sphagnum moss (5 cm in diameter and 7 cm deep) were extracted from a 10 x 2.5 m sampling area in a floating moss and peat blanket extending from the forest border into the lake; the blanket is 10 m broad on the average. Sampling was stratified by types of substrate, with the number of cores in each subsample proportional to the surface area of its stratum. One of the aims of the sampling was to study the spatial distribution of the oribatid community in the mosses, and to verify whether this structure could be related to that of environmental variables.. Within the sampling area, mosses have not been disturbed during recent years, so we considered their spatial pattern to be natural. This data set contains 3 files (below). Data on a line are separated by tabs. 1) Oribatida: 35 species (rows) x 70 sites (columns). 2) Coord.xy: 70 sites (rows) x 2 coordinates, in m, in Cartesian plane (columns). 3) Environ: 70 sites (rows) x 5 environmental variables (columns). The environmental variables were: substratum (seven unordered qualitative classes: four species of Sphagnum, ligneous litter, bare peat, interface bewteen Sphagnum species); coverage density of the shrub cover (three semi-quantitative classes); morphology of the substratum (two qualitative classes: blanket or hummock); density of the substratum in g/l of dry uncompressed matter (quantitative); and water content in percent (quantitative).