Data for: At a fine scale, hardwood patches support wildlife diversity in longleaf pine woodlands

Study Area We monitored wildlife in and around five hardwood patches at The Jones Center at Ichauway in Newton, GA (Figure 1). The Jones Center at Ichauway is a 12,000-ha property managed for conservation and scientific research. At the time of our study, Ichauway was comprised of a range of ecological communities which included stands of longleaf, slash (P. elliottil), and loblolly pine (P. taeda), as well as mixed pine hardwoods, riparian hardwood forests, depressional wetlands, and shrub-scrub uplands. Over 7,000 ha of the property was open canopy upland pine-grassland vegetation comprised of second-generation longleaf pine and managed with frequent prescribed fire and silviculture, which included removal of ‘off site’ hardwoods. Less common on the property were closed canopy hardwood patches composed of a diverse array of oak species including Quercus incana, Q. falcata, Q. laevis, Q. stellata, Q. virginiana, and Q. hemisphaerica (Jacqmain et al. 1999; Loudermilk et al. 2013). The hard transitions from open canopy pine to closed canopy hardwood hammocks occurring at The Jones Center provide excellent conditions to investigate the role of oak hammocks in other longleaf and open pine systems. Animal activity We randomly selected five 4–10-ha hardwood patches in the northern sector of the Jones Center to monitor with camera traps (Fig 1A). Within each patch, we then randomly selected four points along the edge to center a perpendicular transect of cameras; we placed transects at least 25 m apart to improve independence. To investigate how animals respond to the edge at a fine scale we placed a camera 10 m into the longleaf pine, one at the patch edge, and one 10 m into the hardwood patch (Fig 1B). At each camera location, we assessed visual obstruction using a modified Robel pole (Robel et al. 1970; Sovie et al. 2016). We installed each camera 50cm above the ground and angled it towards a bait pile of pecans and cracked corn (Greene et al. 2016). We deployed cameras in each patch five times with each deployment lasting 10–15 days and replaced bait every 5 days. We stopped collecting community composition data in two of the patches after two deployments because we manipulated gray squirrels for a related study (Sovie et al. 2021). We programmed cameras to take three photos every time the camera was tripped using the camera’s normal sensitivity setting and rest for 3 minutes between bursts. We considered photos of animals of the same species taken >20mins apart as independent observations (Greene et al. 2016). We treated camera failure as missing data (Foster & Harmsen 2012) and assumed failures were randomly distributed and do not affect our analysis (Little & Rubin 2014). We followed the American Society of Mammologists guidelines (Sikes et al. 2016) for studying mammals. The University of Florida Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approved our study (Protocol #: 201709855). Data Analysis We visually identified species in pictures and extracted metadata (date/time) from each photograph. We produced detection history matrices for each camera based on a sampling occasion of five days (0 = species not detected; 1 = species detected; NA = inactive sampling unit or occasion). We collapsed our detection data to 5-day sessions to reduce the complexity of the detection matrix and improve model performance (Nichols et al., 2008).研究区域 本研究在美国佐治亚州牛顿市艾乔韦琼斯中心（The Jones Center at Ichauway）的5处阔叶斑块（hardwood patches）及其周边开展野生动物监测（图1）。艾乔韦琼斯中心占地12000公顷，以生态保护与科学研究为核心管理目标。研究开展期间，该区域涵盖多种生态群落，包括长叶松（longleaf pine）、湿地松（P. elliottii）、火炬松（P. taeda）林，以及针阔混交林、河岸阔叶林、洼地湿地与灌丛丘陵地。其中超过7000公顷的区域为开放冠层的丘陵松草甸植被，由二代长叶松构成，通过高频计划火烧（prescribed fire）与营林措施进行管理，包括移除“非立地适宜”阔叶树种。该区域较为少见的是封闭冠层的阔叶斑块，其组成物种包含多种栎属植物，如银叶栎（Quercus incana）、柳叶栎（Q. falcata）、平滑栎（Q. laevis）、星毛栎（Q. stellata）、弗吉尼亚栎（Q. virginiana）以及半球栎（Q. hemisphaerica）（Jacqmain et al. 1999; Loudermilk et al. 2013）。艾乔韦中心内开放冠层松林与封闭冠层阔叶林之间的清晰边界，为探究栎类林在长叶松与其他开放松林生态系统中的作用提供了绝佳研究条件。 动物活动 本研究在艾乔韦中心北部区域随机选取5处面积为4–10公顷的阔叶斑块，使用红外触发相机（camera traps）开展监测（图1A）。在每个斑块内，沿斑块边缘随机选取4个点位作为垂直样带的中心，布设红外触发相机；各相机样带之间间距至少25米，以保证采样独立性。为精细化探究动物对边缘生境的响应，我们分别在长叶松林地内10米处、斑块边缘以及阔叶斑块内10米处各布设1台相机（图1B）。在每个相机点位，我们使用改良式罗贝尔杆（Robel pole）评估植被视觉阻碍程度（Robel et al. 1970; Sovie et al. 2016）。每台相机安装于距地面50厘米高度，朝向山核桃与碎玉米组成的诱饵堆布设（Greene et al. 2016）。本研究在每个斑块内分5次部署相机，每次部署持续10–15天，每5天更换一次诱饵。由于其中2处斑块需要针对一项相关研究开展灰松鼠操控实验，我们在2次部署后停止了这2个斑块的群落组成数据采集（Sovie et al. 2021）。相机设置为触发后拍摄3张照片，采用常规灵敏度模式，两次连拍之间休息3分钟。我们将同一物种间隔超过20分钟拍摄的照片视为独立观测样本（Greene et al. 2016）。将相机故障视为缺失数据（Foster & Harmsen 2012），并假设故障随机分布，不会对分析结果造成影响（Little & Rubin 2014）。本研究遵循美国哺乳动物学会的哺乳动物研究指南（Sikes et al. 2016），研究方案经佛罗里达大学机构实验动物护理和使用委员会（Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, IACUC）批准（协议编号：201709855）。 数据分析 我们对照片中的物种进行目视鉴定，并从每张照片中提取元数据（日期/时间）。基于5天为一个采样周期，我们为每台相机生成检测历史矩阵（0表示未检测到物种，1表示检测到物种，NA表示采样单元或周期无效）。为降低检测矩阵的复杂度并提升模型性能，我们将检测数据整合为5天周期的汇总数据（Nichols et al., 2008）。