Fixed species masses gave 31% energy compensation on nine Portal plots in 2022–2025

We tested whether small seed-eating rodents replaced the estimated energy use of excluded kangaroo rats at Portal, Arizona. We compared the same four control and five exclusion plots in 2012–2019 and 2022–2025. We used 121 complete censuses, 8,710 capture records, and fixed species masses raised to 0.75. Compensation was 21.8% before the pandemic gap and 31.1% after it. The recent conditional 95% resampling interval was 5.1% to 54.9%. The change was +9.3 percentage points, with an interval of −10.2 to +27.0. Removing 2023 reduced the change to −0.4 points. Recent compensation remained incomplete, and the comparison did not show a clear rise. Data quality, repeat-capture, and observed-mass checks gave similar recent estimates. The total exclusion-to-control energy ratio rose by 11.9 points in the point estimates. Kangaroo-rat captures on exclusion plots account for 4.6 points, or 39% of that rise. A separate raw-data calculation reproduced all main estimates. The package contains exact source tables, provenance, code, results, resamples, and figures. Resampling assumes exchangeable plots and approximately stationary variation within each period. Four recent years at one site cannot establish a lasting change or a climate cause.

biodiversity · species loss · functional compensation · Portal Project · desert rodents · long-term experiment · energy use · temporal extension