This data repository is associated with the article ‘Cascading effects of landscape, mediated by mesoclimate, on carabid communities and weed seed predation in winter cereals’. It includes both the datasets used (climatic, landscape, agricultural practices and biological data). Below is the abstract of the article:

Agricultural intensification, landscape simplification, and climate change threaten biodiversity and ecosystem services in arable lands. Increasing semi-natural habitats and landscape heterogeneity can mitigate these impacts by providing diverse habitats, resources, and modifying mesoclimate. As effective natural enemies in arable lands, carabids play a key role in pest and weed seed regulation and are influenced by field management and landscape. This study hypothesized that field management and landscape factors directly, as well as indirectly (via mesoscale air temperature), influence carabid communities and weed seed predation. We sampled 77 winter cereal fields across 20 landscape windows selected along uncorrelated gradients of semi-natural habitat amount and landscape heterogeneity. We monitored air temperature, carabid communities, and weed seed predation during two sampling periods in late spring and early summer 2023. Piecewise Structural Equation Models were built to test for the direct and indirect effects of local factors (farming practices and standing weeds), landscape and mesoclimate on carabids and weed seed predation. Results showed that the amount semi-natural habitats and landscape heterogeneity primarily influence carabid activity density and composition, which in turn affect weed seed predation. Grasslands, by providing resources and refuges, favour carabids but also increase maximum air temperature, indirectly influencing carabid composition, likely due to thermotolerance traits. In addition, a cascading effect of farming practices on seed predation was also observed in late spring, mediated by carabid activity-density. The study highlights the importance of semi-natural habitats, landscape heterogeneity, and farming practices in shaping carabid communities and their ecosystem services in arable fields. We highlight the influence of the landscape components on mesoscale air temperatures, impacting the species composition of carabid communities and potentially affecting weed regulation services through seed predation.