10.5061/DRYAD.FQZ612JTH
Braschler, Brigitte
0000-0003-0088-3651
University of Basel
Data from: Functional diversity and habitat preferences of native
grassland plants and ground-dwelling invertebrates in private gardens
along an urbanisation gradient
Dryad
dataset
2021
Ecology
Basler Stiftung für experimentelle Zoologie*
2022-11-12T00:00:00Z
2022-04-25T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8343
284866 bytes
4
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Urbanisation influences biodiversity and ecosystem functions. However,
private domestic gardens provide habitats for many species. Challenging
conditions in urban gardens may support species possessing certain traits,
but exclude other species. Functional diversity is therefore often altered
in urban gardens. We surveyed native grassland plants and ground-dwelling
invertebrates (snails, slugs, spiders, millipedes, woodlice, ants, rove
beetles), and compiled data on urbanisation (distance to city centre,
percentage of sealed area) and garden characteristics. We furthermore
derived data on traits and habitat preferences for the species recorded in
the gardens from the literature and own measurements. The survey comprised
35 domestic gardens along a rural-urban gradient in the city of Basel,
Switzerland and its surroundings.
Field survey methods: We selected 35 gardens from a pool of 65 candidates
offered in response to public calls. Selection criteria were the presence
of grassland (at least 4 m2), accessibilty to researchers, and
representation of gardens of different size and management types along the
rural-urban gradient. Native grassland plants were recorded along a
zig-zag line in grassland with effort proportional to the size of the
grassland area in a garden. For total native plant species richness used
as explanatory variable (see below), we complemented native plant species
richness in grassland by recording the native plant species in the other
habitat types along transect lines. These lines ran along the long axis of
garden features. Furthermore, we considered plants at intervals of 2 m
along the transect line to measure the height of the vegetation, which we
used to calculate structural diversity of the vegetation. Invertebrates
were collected using five pitfall traps and five hay bait traps (moist hay
in a bag of coarse plastic mesh) in the grassland area of a garden. Traps
were exposed three times for a week each. For gastropods, millipedes and
ants, trap collections were supplemented by active search (ants: 3 x 15
min, millipedes: 3 x 30 min, gastropods: 1 x 30 min and in the case of
gastropods sieving of soil samples (total 1 litre soil from 5–6 random
surface soil samples per garden). For rove beetles we did not consider the
subfamily Pselaphinae. For spiders and woodlice, we only considered adult
individuals and for ants only workers. In the remaining invertebrate
groups, we included all individuals that could be determined to the
species level (99.4% of all individuals sampled). Abundance data was
pooled over all methods and visits of the biodiversity survey for each
garden. Collection of data on traits and habitat preferences Most data was
derived from publications and online databases. In a few cases we
complemented this with own measurements and observations. All sources are
listed for the respective taxonomic groups in the file
<Species_traits_sources.docx>. Dates of data collection:
Vegetation survey: 2018-07-24 to 2018-08-20 Invertebrate survey:
2018-05-31 to 2018-10-18 Survey of garden habitat types and landscape
variables: 2018-05-31 to 2018-10-18 Trait data (from literature):
2018-11-01 to 2019-08-31 Geographic location of data collection: 35
private domestic gardens in the city of Basel, its suburbs and nearby
villages in North-western Switzerland (47˚ 34' N, 7˚ 36' E).
Information on the street addresses of the gardens is not provided to
protect the privacy of the garden owners. Software used: All data was
saved as workbooks in xlsx format using Microsoft Excel for Mac Version
16.11.1. A list of sources is given as a Microsoft Word docx file.
Detailed definitions of variables and data files are given in a readme
file save as a text file.
For native grassland plants and ants only presence (+) or absence (-) data
is provided. For all other taxoonomic groups abundance data is given.
Traits and habitat preferences used depend on the taxonomic group. For
some species not all traits or habitat preferences are known resulting in
some missing values. Detailed definitions of variables, methods used and
links to publications from the project are available from the readme file
accompagning this dataset.