Fungal diversity and community composition are mainly related to soil and vegetation factors. However, the relative contribution of the different drivers remains largely unexplored, especially in subtropical forest ecosystems. We studied the funga...

Plant functional traits, especially leaf traits, are accepted proxies for ecosystem properties. Typically, they are measured at the species level, neglecting within-species variation. While there is extensive knowledge about functional trait chang...

Soil chemical laboratory analyses of VIPs and VIPReps on Site A. Contents of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur as well as pH-values (in H2O and KCl) of five depth increments per plot.

Soil chemical laboratory analyses of VIPs and selected plots on Site A. Cation exchange capacity, base saturation and soil fertility attributes of six depth increments per plot.

This dataset is based on spider specimens collected from VIP plots in June 2017 using the branch-beating method. DNA metabarcoding was subsequently employed to detect prey DNA within the spiders' gut contents.

Questions: One tenet of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research is the dependence of ecosystem functions on species-specific differences in traits. Community assembly theory predicts niche differentiation among the constituent species, for...