Alpine Plant and Orthopteran Community Data Along an Elevation Gradient

Four tabular datasets from a study on plant-herbivore interactions in the Swiss Alps. The data includes orthopteran community richness and abundance for 175 and 190 sites, and leaf trait measurements for 287 plant species and community-weighted means for 307 plant communities. The data was collected by researchers including Patrice Descombes and published in the Journal of Ecology in 2017.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between insect herbivore abundance and plant palatability based on community-level trait data.
• Analyzing how leaf traits like SLA and LDMC vary across an elevation gradient.
• Studying patterns of orthopteran species richness and abundance in alpine environments.
• Investigating community assembly using community-weighted mean trait values.

Strengths

• Data covers 175 to 307 distinct sampling units across four related datasets.
• Includes specific, measured traits such as SLA, LDMC, C:N ratio, and leaf palatability.
• Sampling is focused along a defined environmental gradient in the Swiss Alps above 1000m.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown for the individual files, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Patrice Descombes et al., associated with the publication in Journal of Ecology.

Collection Method

Field sampling along an elevation gradient in the Swiss Alps, as described in the referenced paper.

Geography

Swiss Alps (sites above 1000m for one orthopteran dataset).