Here we analysed the impacts of low (mowing) versus a newly developed high intensity (scarification, i.e. mowing with subsequent moss removal) management practice on spider biodiversity (abundance, taxonomic and functional diversity), as an excellent bioindicator for habitat quality shifts due to environmental change. We sampled spiders at 15 localities, 5 replicates of the two management practices each as well as 5 unmanaged controls in the Lüneburg Heath, Northern Germany, one year after the management was implemented. Pitfall traps were used, set in a transect with 10 m distance between traps. Five traps were set per locality from 03.04.2019-01.04.2020. Additionally, the cover of heather, grass, heather litter and bare soil was visually estimated in a 2 m radius around each trap and the distance to the nearest tree was measured. The sum of all cover classes do not always equal 100%. On the one hand, some cover classes were not used in the paper due to strong correlation with others (e.g. moss cover with bare soil cover) and are not presented here leading to lower values. On the other hand heather cover and heather litter were in some cases counted in the same area where heather letter was found below heather plants.

The dataset contains: Locality ID (LH1-LH15); location; latitude/longitude of locality; elevation of locality; pitfall trap number (five per locality); trap ID (combination of locality and trap number); trapping period (survey ID), ranging from 1-19 (03.04.2019-02.04.2020), date/time when traps were opened; date/time when traps were sampled Fieldwork (pitfall material collection) was always conducted between 09:00-14:00 on the last day of this period; spider family; spider genus; spider species; taxon name link to GBIF; spider sex (male, female, juvenile); number of individuals per trap; number of trap days i.e. how many days the trap was open (effort); number of individuals per trap day (catch per unit effort); mean body length of the species (separate values for males and females) based on Nentwig et al. (2024); species body mass estimation (separate values for males and females) based on Penell et al. (2018); biomass of the species * abundance; biomass of the species * abundance per trap day (catch per unit effort); spider functional guild based on Cardoso et al. (2011); threat status of spiders according to the German Red List (Blick et al. 2016); phenological length of adult spider activity (both sexes) in months according to Nentwig et al. (2024); heathland management used (mowing, scarification or unmanaged); military prsence i.e. whether (1) or not (0) there was military presence at the sites in the past; visual estimation of Calluna vulgaris cover (in %) in a 2 m radius around each trap; visual estimation of grass cover (in %) in a 2 m radius around each trap; visual estimation of bare soil cover (both mineral and organic soil; in %) in a 2 m radius around each trap; visual estimation of Calluna vulgaris litter cover (in %) in a 2 m radius around each trap; and distance to nearest tree - distance to nearest tree (in m).