I'm looking for datasets on species' biomasses (or abundances, or productivities) in different sites comprising "nested subsets" of species (i.e. the less-diverse sites comprise strict subsets of the species in the most-diverse site). More specifically, datasets need to fulfill the following criteria:
-Data from at least two sites, or from the same site at two or more different times (e.g., before vs. after a disturbance or an experimental manipulation such as predator removal or nutrient addition). Sites could be natural unmanipulated sites (e.g., lakes, islands, permanent plots), and/or experimentally manipulated (e.g., different plots within a manipulative experiment). Sites need not have similar environmental conditions, and in fact it's more interesting if they don't (either because the sites are situated along a natural environmental gradient, or because some of the sites were manipulated in some fashion). -Data from each site on the biomass (or abundance) of each species within a single trophic level, or within some more-or-less well-defined ecological guild (e.g., "plants", "algae", "zooplankton", "insects", "trees"). If data are not completely resolved to species level, that's ok. -Nested subsets: the less species-rich site(s) need to comprise strict subsets of the species in the most species-rich site(s). However, if this criterion is almost but not quite fulfilled (e.g., because of a few rare species present at the less species-rich site, but not the most species-rich site), I can probably still work with the data. I plan to use the datasets to try out a new analytical approach I have developed to tease apart the effects of species richness, composition, and other factors on "aggregate" ecosystem functions like total biomass. This approach is not yet published, and my hope is that illustrative applications to the types of datasets described above would form a key component of a future publication. I would of course be happy to provide more details and discuss issues related to acknowledgement/co-authorship with anyone who is able to provide suitable datasets. I am hoping to gain access to 2-3 suitable datasets ASAP, as the ms is otherwise ready to go, but in the longer term hope to gain access to many more datasets as part of an extensive comparative analysis. Thank you very much in advance to anyone who's able to help out. Jeremy Fox Asst. Professor, University of Calgary
