08139ee8-072e-4980-ad50-6777a0b2e7c8 Universidad de Sevilla Elena Quintero Integrative Ecology elenaquintero.qb@gmail.es https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4979-6874 Estación Biológica de Doñana Blanca Arroyo-Correa Integrative Ecology blanca.arroyo@ebd.csic.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9402-3013 Estación Biológica de Doñana Jorge Isla Integrative Ecology jorge.isla@ebd.csic.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2307-9730 Universidad de Sevilla Francisco Rodríguez-Sánchez Permanent professor frodriguez@us.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7981-1599 Estación Biológica de Doñana Pedro Jordano Associate professor jordano@ebd.csic.es https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2142-9116 LifeWatch ERIC Lucia Vaira LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre ICT Coordinator lucia.vaira@lifewatch.eu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5935-6074 2025-01-03 en Repository containing datasets and code for manuscript entitled Downscaling mutualistic networks from species to individuals reveals consistent interaction niches and roles within plant populations. Please refer to makefile.R for project outline, explanation and codes used, and to the README.md in networks folder on GitHub https://github.com/PJordano-Lab/MS_individual-based_networks/tree/v1.0.0?tab=readme-ov-file for data structure and compilation. For this study, we compiled 46 empirical individual-based networks on plant-animal seed dispersal mutualism, encompassing 1037 plant individuals across 29 species from various regions. We compare the structure of individual-based networks to that of species-based networks and by extending the niche concept to interaction assemblages, we explore levels of individual plant specialization. We examine how individual variation influences network structure and how plant individuals "explore" the interaction niche of the population. Individual-based networks Species-based networks Population niches MIT License Zenodo landing page https://zenodo.org/records/14591621 DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14591621 Download data and code https://zenodo.org/records/14591621/files/PJordano-Lab/MS_individual-based_networks-v1.0.0.zip?download=1 Universidad de Sevilla Elena Quintero Integrative Ecology elenaquintero.qb@gmail.es https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4979-6874 For this study, we compiled ecological networks on plant-frugivore interactions, both at the species and the individual plant level. Species-based networks were gathered from published studies at community scale. Individual-based networks, which are scarcer, were compiled from phyto-centric studies (plant-based). We combined published studies with unpublished data-sets, gathering data for 21 different study systems, including data-sets from our own field studies with different Mediterranean species (n = 9). Some of the selected studies present more than one network from different communities (in species-based studies) or populations (in individual-based studies). Data is entered as adjacency matrices, where rows represent plant species (or individuals) and columns represent animal species. When possible we referred the interaction value to the coarsest level, that is, frugivore visitation events, otherwise number of fruits consumed. For analytic purposes, we discarded networks in which the number of interacting nodes (plants and frugivore species) was less than 15 or plants were less than six (n = 13 networks). The final data-set consists of 105 networks, of which 46 are individual-based networks and 59 are species-based networks.