Environmental context shapes the relationship between grass consumption and body size in African herbivore communities

This 'README_file_Herbivore community assembly.txt' file was generated on 2024-01-23 by JOEL O. ABRAHAM GENERAL INFORMATION 1. Title of Dataset: Environmental context shapes the relationship between grass consumption and body size in African herbivore communities 2. Author Information A. Principal Investigator Contact Information Name: Joel O. Abraham Institution: Princeton University Email: B. Associate or Co-investigator Contact Information Name: J. Tyler Faith Institution: University of Utah Email: 3. Date of data collection (approximate): 2023-08-01 to 2024-01-13 4. Geographic location of data collection: eastern and central Africa; compiled from existing literature/data sources 5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: Joel O. Abraham was supported by the NSF GRFP J. Tyler Faith was supported by NSF grants CNH-1826666 and 2224318 SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION 1. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: None. 2. Links to publications that cite or use the data: TBD 3. Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data: TBD 4. Links/relationships to ancillary data sets: NA 5. Was data derived from another source? YES A. List source(s): Cerling, T.E., Andanje, S.A., Blumenthal, S.A., Brown, F.H., Chritz, K.L., Harris, J.M., et al. (2015). Dietary changes of large herbivores in the Turkana Basin, Kenya from 4 to 1 Ma. PNAS, 112, 11467–11472. Fick, S.E. & Hijmans, R.J. (2017). WorldClim 2: new 1-km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 37, 4302–4315. Rowan, J., Beaudrot, L., Franklin, J., Reed, K.E., Smail, I.E., Zamora, A., et al. (2020). Geographically divergent evolutionary and ecological legacies shape mammal biodiversity in the global tropics and subtropics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117, 1559–1565. Venter, Z.S., Cramer, M.D. & Hawkins, H.-J. (2018). Drivers of woody plant encroachment over Africa. Nat Commun, 9, 2272. Wilman, H., Belmaker, J., Simpson, J., Rosa, C. de la, Rivadeneira, M.M. & Jetz, W. (2014). EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world’s birds and mammals. Ecology, 95, 2027–2027. 6. Recommended citation for this dataset: Abraham, J.O., Rowan, J., O'Brien, K., Sokolowski, K.G., and Faith, J.T. (2024).Environmental context shapes the relationship between grass consumption and body size in African herbivore communities, Dryad, Dataset. DATA & FILE OVERVIEW 1. File List: README_file_Herbivore community assembly.txt: README file explaining how the dataset was generated and the data contained in the dataset EcoEvo_Abraham et al_community level diet data.csv: EcoEvo_Abraham et al_community covariates.csv: METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION 1. Description of methods used for collection/generation of data: We quantified local grass dependence from a dataset of stable isotope data collected from across eastern and central Africa, Cerling et al. (2015). We identified which species were missing local data using a dataset of herbivore community composition, Rowan et al. (2020). We then computed regional species-level averages for those community members missing local diet data, also from the aforementioned stable isotope dataset. We extracted species-level body mass estimates from EltonTraits (Wilman et al. 2014). We downloaded shapefiles for each community from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). Using these shapefiles, we extracted environmental covariates for each herbivore community: we calculated mean annual rainfall, mean rainfall seasonality, mean annual temperature, and mean temperature seasonality for each community from climatic data layers downloaded from WorldClim 2.0 (Fick and Hijmans 2017); we extracted estimates of woody cover for each community from a data layer of fractional woody cover for sub-Saharan Africa (Venter et al. 2018). 2. Methods for processing the data: NA 3. Instrument- or software-specific information needed to interpret the data: NA - R was used to generate community covariates data but is not necessary for using the data 4. Standards and calibration information, if appropriate: NA 5. Environmental/experimental conditions: NA 6. Describe any quality-assurance procedures performed on the data: NA 7. People involved with sample collection, processing, analysis and/or submission: All data were compiled and extracted by Joel O. Abraham. DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: EcoEvo_Abraham et al_community level diet data.csv 1. Number of variables: 10 2. Number of cases/rows: 443 3. Variable List: Ecosystem - the abbreviation for the herbivore community to which the data correspond Protected_area - the name of the protected area from which stable isotope data were collected and environmental covariates were extracted Type - whether the data were local (directly from Cerling et al. 2015), regional (species-level averages derived from Cerling et al. 2015), or global (pulled from global diet data compilations because that species was not present in Cerling's dataset). Species - the scientific name of the community member Order - the order to which the community member belongs Family - the family to which the community member belongs C4_mean - the mean dietary grass fraction estimate for the community member C4_SD - the estimated standard deviation in dietary grass fraction for the community member C4_N - the number of samples used to generate the estimated dietary grass fraction mean and standard deviation Body_mass - the body mass of the community member, in kilograms (kg) 4. Missing data codes: 'NA' 5. Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: NA DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: EcoEvo_Abraham et al_community covariates.csv 1. Number of variables: 19 2. Number of cases/rows: 23 3. Variable List: Ecosystem - the abbreviation for the herbivore community to which the data correspond Community_name - the full name of the herbivore community to which the data correspond Park_name - the name of the protected area from which stable isotope data were collected and environmental covariates were extracted WDPA_PID - the unique ID assigned to the protected area by the World Database on Protected Areas Latitude - the latitudinal centroid of samples collected for each community Longitude - the longitudinal centroid of samples collected for each community Complete_community_data - whether or not community composition data were available for the community Elephant - whether or not elephants were present within a community SpN - the number of herbivore species present in the community Woody_cover_mean - the average woody cover for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community Woody_cover_SD - the standard deviation in woody cover for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community MATemp_mean - mean annual temperature (in degrees Celcius) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community MATemp_SD - standard deviation in mean annual temperature (in degrees Celcius) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community TempS_mean - mean temperature seasonality (measured as the standard deviation of temperature across the seasonal cycle) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community TempS_SD - standard deviation in temperature seasonality (the standard deviation of temperature across the seasonal cycle) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community MARain_mean - mean annual rainfall (in millimeters) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community MARain_SD - standard deviation in mean annual rainfall (in millimeters) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community RainS_mean - mean rainfall seasonality (measured as the coefficient of variation [standard deviation divided by the mean] in precipitation throughout the year) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community RainS_SD - standard deviation in rainfall seasonality (measured as the coefficient of variation [standard deviation divided by the mean] in precipitation throughout the year) for the protected area corresponding to the herbivore community 4. Missing data codes: 'NA' 5. Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: NA