How tidal elevation affects the interplay between predation and substrate in shellfish recruitment Version 2

In coastal systems, benthic organisms must balance stress from abiotic conditions, with biotic stressors such as predation and competition. A classic example from rocky shores is that of starfish as keystone predators, restricting mussel populations at lower depths, while their upper limits are determined by abiotic conditions. A similarly clear and experimentally supported paradigm in how predation shapes benthic communities over a depth gradient is lacking for soft-sediment systems. Here, we experimentally tested how predation and hard substrate availability affected recruitment of common endo- and epibenthic shellfish species in subtidal and intertidal zones of a soft-sediment system using predator exclosures. We assessed the effect of predation, substrate and tidal zone on species richness, densities and shell length of different shellfish species. This offers insight in how these respective factors shape shellfish recruitment in soft-sediment, which can be a key to conservation and restoration of shellfish as recruitment success is a key determinant of population size and stability. This dataset and the correspponding R-script were used for the statistics as presented in the paper. It contains a metadata file, and datafiles containing sample information and abundances, shell lengths and biomass of the shellfish found in the experiment as well as the script to analyse them.