Under the canopy of 10 site A tree species (Castanea henryi, Castanopsis sclerophylla, Choerosbondias axillaris, Cunninghammia lanceolata, Cyclobalanopsis glauca, Liquidamber formosana, Lithocarpus glaber, Nyssa sinensis, Pinus massoniana, Schima superba) leaf litter ants were collected with Winkler extraction. The two coniferous species were only sampled in monocultures (no mixtures are planted), the remaining 8 tree species were sampled for the full gradient from 1 to 16 species mixtures. The data allow to test for the effect of tree species richness and tree species identity on leaf-litter ant diversity and community composition. As ants are colonial organisms, raw abundances should be analyzed with caution as the presence of single colonies with high worker numbers may bias abundances. The dataset is presented in long format. An R script to transform the dataset to wide format is given as an additional freeformat file (see below)

Around each of the target tree individuals (column 'trees_ID') one leaf litter sample was take be sifting the entire litter in the 1*1 m square around the tree trunk (trunk was the center of the square). The sifted litter was filled in standard winkler bags and left for 48 h. Each of the 8 angiosperm tree species was sampled in tree plots of the diversity levels 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 with 4 individuals per plot, summing up to 480 samples. The two coniferous species were sampled with 4 individuals in the 5 commercial monocultures planted for the species, resulting in 40 samples. All ants were counted and identified to species or morphospecies.

Site A, BEF-China Main Experiment, near Xingangshan in Jiangxi province

Formicidae (ants) extracted from the leaf litter