Data from: Context-dependent effects of large wildlife declines on small mammal communities in central Kenya

Many species of large wildlife have declined drastically worldwide. These reductions often lead to profound shifts in the ecology of entire communities and ecosystems. However, the effects of these large wildlife declines on other taxa likely hinge upon both underlying abiotic properties of these systems and on the types of secondary anthropogenic changes associated with wildlife loss, making impacts difficult to predict. To better understand how these important contextual factors determine the consequences of large-wildlife declines on other animals in a community, we examined the effects of three common forms of large-wildlife loss -removal without replacement (using fences), removal followed by replacement with domestic stock, and removal accompanied by crop agricultural use- on small mammal abundance, diversity, and community composition, in landscapes that varied in several abiotic attributes (rainfall, soil fertility, land-use intensity) in central Kenya. We found that small mammal communities were indeed heavily impacted by all forms of large-wildlife decline, showing, on average: i) higher densities, ii) lower species richness per site, and iii) different species assemblages in sites from which large wildlife were removed. However, the nature and magnitude of these effects were strongly context-dependent. Rainfall, type of land-use change, and the interaction of these two factors were key predictors of both the magnitude and type of responses of small mammals. The strongest effects, particularly abundance responses, tended to be observed in low-rainfall areas. Whereas isolated wildlife removal primarily led to increased small mammal abundance, wildlife removal associated with secondary uses (agriculture, domestic stock) had much more variable effects on abundance and stronger impacts on diversity and composition. Collectively, these results 1) highlight the importance of context in determining the impacts of large-wildlife decline on small mammal communities, 2) emphasize the challenges in extrapolating results from controlled experimental studies to predict the effects of wildlife declines that are accompanied by secondary land-uses, and 3) suggest that, because of the context-dependent nature of the responses to large-wildlife decline, large-wildlife status alone cannot be reliably used to predict small mammal community changes. Rodent abundance and community compositoin by siteThis file provides site level data for all analyses in this paper. Each row in the datasheet is a site (site_number), the paired associations in the site are indicated (pair_number). For each site a range of properties describing the site are provided. These include: Categorical descriptions of land use (LAND_USE_TYPE), the interpolated level of annual rainfall (a. rainfall) and seasonal rainfall (s.rainfall), the calculated level of vegetation cover (cover), number of plant species per pin (species.per.pin), the max height of veg at each pin (max.height), the total plant species richness per plot (plant.species.richness), the average cover of dung from somesticated species (Dung.dom) and from wild species (Dung.wild), the proportion of pins with grass (grass), sedge (sedge), shrub (shrub), succulent (succulent), tree (tree), other woody species (woody), and agriculture species (agriculture; these species not counted as grasses or forbs to avoid duplicate counts). Predator density measured from camera traps is reported as number of predators per hour of camera trap data. Sand to silt ratio in pooled soil sample per site is also provided (sand.silt). All additional columns report catch per unit effort (CPUE) of mammal species per plot. Mammal species are abbreviated by the first two letters of genus and species.rodents_DRYAD.csv