Invertebrate Community Data from a High-Volume Brazilian Cave System

168 standardized quadrats across 56 sectors in the Brejões Cave System revealed 123 terrestrial invertebrate species, including 23 obligate cave dwellers. Researcher Gabriel Vaz published this dataset in 2026 alongside manuscripts analyzing niche and neutral processes in community assembly. The data includes R scripts for analysis and is shared under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Model species richness of troglobitic invertebrates against distance from aquatic environments using sector-level data.
• Analyze beta diversity patterns in invertebrate communities structured by temperature and resource availability gradients.
• Examine the relationship between shelter heterogeneity and non-troglobitic species richness across 56 cave sectors.
• Investigate seasonal persistence of community composition using time-series data from the 'Brejões seasonality' scripts.

Strengths

• Standardized sampling across 168 quadrats and 56 sectors provides structured spatial coverage.
• Identifies 123 invertebrate species with 23 obligate cave species, confirming a biodiversity hotspot.
• Includes R scripts for reproducibility of the ecological analyses described in the manuscripts.

Limitations

• The dataset is very small at 41.8 KB, indicating limited raw data or primarily analysis code.
• Specific column names and row counts are unknown, complicating direct assessment of data structure.
• Temporal coverage for seasonality analysis is not explicitly defined in the provided description.

Provenance

Source

Figshare, authored by Gabriel Vaz.

Collection Method

Standardized biological sampling across 56 sectors (30 m²) and 168 quadrats (1 m²), complemented by intuitive searches.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated in April 2026.

Geography

Brejões Cave System, a high-volume Neotropical cave in Brazil.