FragSAD: A database of diversity and species abundance distributions from habitat fragments

Habitat destruction is the single greatest anthropogenic threat to biodiversity. Decades of research on this issue have led to the accumulation of hundreds of data sets comparing species assemblages in larger, intact, habitats to smaller, more fragmented, habitats. Despite this, little synthesis or consensus has been achieved, primarily because of non‐standardized sampling methodology and analyses of notoriously scale‐dependent response variables (i.e., species richness). To be able to compare and contrast the results of habitat fragmentation on species' assemblages, it is necessary to have the underlying data on species abundances and sampling intensity, so that standardization can be achieved. To accomplish this, we systematically searched the literature for studies where abundances of species in assemblages (of any taxa) were sampled from many habitat patches that varied in size. From these, we extracted data from several studies, and contacted authors of studies where appropriate da...