Revision of Luquillo Dataset 107: El Verde Grid Invertebrate Data from Tue, 2010-06-08 13:26
Revisions allow you to track differences between multiple versions of your content, and revert back to older versions.
Overview:
El Verde Grid Invertebrate Data is a long-term observational study of the snail community at the Luquillo LTER on Puerto Rico.
Ecological Level: Community
Biome: Tropical
- Habitat: Forest. 4 different "cover classes" on the plot, categorized by historical human use intensity (more details in Thompson et al. 2002).
Location: Puerto Rico (18 deg 10' N, 65 deg 30' W)
Spatial Scale of data: The Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot is a 16 ha grid and snail data is collected at 40- 3 m radius sampling sites on this grid.
Timespan: 1991-2007, but pre-1995 there is a different sampling intensity than post-1995 and affect abundance estimates (see Data Collection Summary and Issues below)
Frequency: 2 times per year (wet season and dry season)
Observational/Experimental: Observational
Dataset Location:
Data collection summary:2 times per year (1 wet season and 1 dry season), the Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot is surveyed for snails. Surveys are conducted at 40 permanently located points on the plot. A minimum of 2 observers search each sample point for 3 minutes for all visible gastropods (i.e., no litter disturbance was conducted). Points are searched for 1-4 nights per season (1 night in Dry Season 1991, 2 nights Wet Season 1991-Wet Season 1993, 3 Dry Season 1994-Dry Season 1995, 4 Wet Season 1995-present except for dry season 2003 when surveys were only done on 2 nights).
Data Collected: Species, abundance
Issues:
- Abundance estimates not comparable through time: Sampling effort changes through time (see Data Collection Summary for details) This means that abundance estimates are not comparable through time, except for wet season only 1995-present.