Data for: Dwelling or diet? Tropical treeholes are affected less by hurricane-caused forest gaps than by litter source

Resistance and resilience are two strategies that different species may specialize in; however, these strategies require trade-offs with one another and can have non-linear responses to ecosystem disturbances. Therefore, it is imperative that we better understand what strategies ecological communities adopt to extreme weather events such as hurricanes.

When Costa Rica experienced its first hurricane in decades, Hurricane Otto in 2016, numerous ecosystems were exposed to this new disturbance, including aquatic treeholes. Here we contrasted the effects of forest gap formation from a hurricane to effects of differences in litter origin (intact vs. fragmented forest). Aquatic invertebrate communities in treeholes were unaffected in terms of diversity and abundance, and composition was at most subtly affected by either hurricane-generated gaps or litter origin.