Trophic niche overlap decreases in related mesocarnivore species

In natural environments, competition between species is a crucial factor for the survival or demise of populations. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms that promote species coexistence is crucial in community and evolutionary ecology. The phylogenetic limiting to similarity hypothesis (PLSH) posits that closely related species should experience greater competition due to niche conservatism, leading to higher overlap in resource use. However, studies have shown mixed results regarding the influence of phylogenetic distance and other abiotic and biotic factors on interspecific competition. This study, which is based on an extensive bibliographic review of more than 200 sources over nearly five decades, explores the role of phylogenetic relatedness, body mass differences, and environmental factors such as primary productivity, in shaping trophic niche overlap among mesocarnivores across ten global biomes. Our results suggest that phylogenetic distance and body mass differences are the ..., , # Data from: Trophic niche overlap decreases in related mesocarnivore species

This repository contains the datasets and analysis files used in the study by Sarabia et al. (2025). All materials are freely available for use, provided appropriate citation of the original article.

The three folders are as follows:

* **phylogenetic_dist**: Contains the extrapolation of phylogenetic distances from *cytochrome b* data to mitochondrial distances in carnivores. Includes pairwise distance tables and Python scripts testing regression models and regression trees.
* **pianka**: Includes the compiled dietary dataset from all reviewed studies, a Python script to calculate Pianka’s niche overlap coefficients, and the resulting pairwise comparisons across species, ecoregions, and biomes.
* **GLM**: Contains the extended analytical dataset integrating phylogenetic, ecological, and abiotic variables, along with the R scripts used to run Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs) testing the relationship b...,