Earthworm species in Musa spp. (plantain and banana) plantations worldwide
Description
Plantains and bananas (Musa spp.) are perennial crops grown primarily in the tropics and subtropics that may provide suitable habitats for earthworm communities. However, little is known regarding the effects of these crops on the abundance and diversity of earthworm species, and the occurrence of native and exotic earthworm species in plantations worldwide. Hence, a review of the literature was performed to evaluate earthworm communities (abundance, biomass, species composition) in plantain and banana fields worldwide. Both the common and scientific names of bananas/plantains were used for a bibliographic search online using keywords in English, Portuguese, French and Spanish: Musa (genus), Musa acuminata, Musa balbisiana, banana, banane, banano, plátano and plantain. These were then crossed with the common names of earthworms in these languages: earthworms, minhoca, oligochaeta, oligoqueta, vers de terre and lombriz de tierra. Online scientific databases (e.g., Web of Science, Science Direct, Scielo, google academic and the Base de Dados de Teses e Dissertações of Brazil) were consulted. The resulting publications were reviewed and those containing data on species identification were selected and these data extracted, as well as information on sampling sites (localities, countries, and crop management practices). Earthworm species were separated into different families and into native or exotic to the region of occurrence, and species richness per site and for each group (native, exotic) were computed, when available. The present dataset consists of an excel file with five spreadsheets, including data from 49 publications: 1. Legend: Explanation of the types of data/information included in the other four spreadsheets, including a description of the variables in each. 2. Sites&species: Includes data on the earthworm family and species found at each locality/country, its origin (native or exotic), and the management practices associated with the collection site. Each collection is associated with its bibliographic reference. 3. Bio&geographic info: Summary calculations including a full list of species encountered (≥104 spp.), their origin (native, exotic), any observations of relevance, total number of records and % occurrences for each earthworm species and family, and the species (total, natives, exotics) richness per country and management practices. 4. Richness: Data on the number of species (total, natives, exotics) at each locality (cf. Table 4 of publication cited below). 5. References: Full bibliographic information of each publication used in the dataset. This dataset is associated with a Zookeys article of Cremonesi et al. (2020): Earthworm species in Musa spp. plantations in Brazil and worldwide. This publication discusses the main results of the data in the spreadsheets, regarding species richness (native, exotic, total) per crop (plantain, banana), country, and management practices.