A dataframe in standard format due to Migliorini and Caruso presenting observations of oribatid mites.
data(caruso)Dataset caruso is a data frame with 194 observations on 5
variables. Each row corresponds to a species; the observations (rows)
are the species abundances in each of 5 habitats.
Following Migliorini et al 2002, the habitats were:
a pure beech woodland (‘Beech’)
a coppice woodland (‘Coppice’)
grassland (‘Grassland’)
heathland (‘Heathland’)
‘Biancana’ badlands (‘Biancana’)
Oribatid mites are rather small and very interesting free living soil microarthropods. They have a huge species diversity with populations characterised by highly aggregated distributions over multiple spatial scales ranging from a few centimetres to hundreds of meters.
Within each habitat, several soil samples were collected (five randomly located replicates per each month: see the paper Migliorini et al. 2002). So, actually, that is a network of small samples that make a single large sample.
The five study areas of this data set belong to five habitats that are very typical of that Mediterranean region. These five areas also belong to a rather homogeneous biogeographical region (southern Tuscany). On the ground of what is known on the biology and community patterns of Oribatida, several a-priori hypotheses can be made on expected changes in the diversity of their assemblages and immigration rates respectively between and within the five areas. For instance, under the Neutral Model one might expect that the Beech forest should have the highest Theta and an immigration rate of about 1, while one might expect the opposite for the Biancana (a very arid habitat, a kind of gariga/garrigue with very patchy vegetation).
T. Caruso and others 2007. “The Berger-Parker index as an effective tool for monitoring the biodiversity of disturbed soils: a case study on Mediterranean oribatid (Acari: Oribatida) assemblages”. Biodiversity Conservation, 16:3277-3285
M. Migliorini, A. Petrioli, and F. Bernini 2002. “Comparative analysis of two edaphic zoocoenoses (Oribatid mites and Carabid beetles) in five habitats of the ‘Pietraporciana’ and ‘Lucciolabella’ Nature Reserves (Orcia Valley, central Italy)”. Acta Oecologica, 23:361-374
# NOT RUN {
data(caruso)
summary(count(caruso[,1]))
# }
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