Data for Soil Nematode Functional Diversity, Successional Patterns, and Indicator Taxa Associated with Vertebrate Decomposition

This dataset is associated with the doctoral dissertation of Lois S. Taylor (forthcoming in TRACE) under the direction of UTK Professors Dr. Jennifer DeBruyn and Dr. Ernest Bernard.

This study was supported in part by a National Science Foundation (NSF) award 1549726 to JMD. Additional support was provided by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Award No. 2017-R2-CX-0008 to LST.

This dataset is connected with Lois Taylor's dissertation, A high resolution study of long-term vertebrate decomposition in human and animal model systems.

Five data files comprise this dataset:

• README file - Orientation to dataset.
• Sensor_data_master_LTAYLOR_Soil nematode functional diversity during vertebrate decomposition - This is the data originating from the Decagon RT-1 and GS3 probes used to measure environmental parameters.
• Nematode_data_master_LTAYLOR_Soil nematode functional diversity during vertebrate decomposition - This is the master complied nematode data file that includes all sampling sites and dates.
• Rcode_LTAYLOR_Soil nematode functional diversity during vertebrate decomposition - This file contains the R code necessary to generate graphs found in all manuscript figures, as well as to perform statistical calculations (ANOVAs, T-tests)
• Nematode_all_indices_LTAYLOR_Soil nematode functional diversity during vertebrate decomposition - This file is constructed from the master nematode data file (Nematode_data_master_LTAYLOR_Soil nematode functional diversity during vertebrate decomposition). This is a compilation of abundance, Shannon diversity, Richness, EI (a faunal index), and the SI (a faunal index), as calculated in Keenan et al (2018), referenced above.