Specialist savvy vs generalist grit: elucidating the trade-offs in adaptive dietary ecomorphology amongst African Green and Bush Snakes

Kinetic feeding bones of macrostomatan Afrophidian snakes enable them to consume diverse prey types. While significant research has focussed on functional feeding morphology in snakes, it often emphasises broad taxonomic comparisons or species with distinct dietary ecologies. There is limited knowledge of how small variations in prey type composition may influence feeding morphology among closely related species sharing similar ecological niches. African Green and Bush Snakes (Philothamnus) feed primarily on frogs (anurophagous) and lizards (saurophagous), but the degree of intraspecific dietary generalisation and specialisation remains unclear. Thus, our study had three objectives: 1) to evaluate proportional differences in anurophagy and saurophagy between 14 Philothamnus species, 2) quantitatively assess the shape differences in four of the main cranial bones functional in feeding and 3) explore models of diet evolution. We hypothesised that differences in feeding morphology would re..., Diet data was collected using the Squamatabase R package (Grundler, 2020) and from citizen science and literature records (Maritz and Maritz, 2020). Compiled prey records are provided here.Whole skull ct scans were segmented for snake skull bones of interest (compound, maxillae, pterygoid and quadrate), for which surface files per bone are provided here. Geometric morphometric analyses were based on these surface files.
Definitions of 3D landmarks are provided here.
The newick phylogenetic tree is from previously published work by the lead author (Engelbrecht et al 2019; 2020, 2021), and provided here as a newick file. The tree file was used in the macroevolution analysis and testing for models of diet evolution for Philothamnus.
Mechanical advantage was calculated from measured bones as described in the MS, and recorded values per specimen are provided in the \"Additional Variables\" file., , # Specialist savvy vs generalist grit: elucidating the trade-offs in adaptive dietary ecomorphology amongst African Green and Bush Snakes

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xt0g](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xt0g)

## Description of the data and file structure

**The supplementary dataset contains the following files:**

**File 1:** Supplementary_Table_1_Diet_Records.csv

**File 2.** Additional_Variables.csv

**File 3.** Compound_Surface_files.zip

**File 4.** Quadrate_Surface_files.zip

**File 5.** Maxillae_Surface_files.zip

**File 6.** Pterygoid_Surface_files.zip

**File 7.** Description of Landmarks_Geometric Morphometric.txt

**File 8.** Hex_files_for_landmarks.zip

**File 9.** Newick Tree from Engelbrecht et al 2021.txt

**File Descriptions**

**File 1: Supplementary Table 1**

Supplementary Table 1 contains compiled predation records for the five Philothamnus predator species investigated for geometric morphometric analyses.

Diet data were collected using the Squamatabas...,