AVONICHE: A global dataset of dietary and foraging niches for birds

The role of each animal species in an ecosystem is largely determined both
by the resources it uses and the behaviours through which these resources
are obtained. Even in well-studied vertebrate groups, like birds,
quantitative data on the relative use of different food resources in the
context of foraging strategies is generally lacking. Most analyses in
macroecology, macroevolution, and conservation biology are therefore
limited to simplified dietary categories, ignoring the specific foraging
behaviours and substrates used to access resources. Here we present
AVONICHE, a dataset quantifying proportional membership in 32 foraging
niches, representing a combination of dietary categories and associated
foraging strategies used by all bird species. The dataset
includes species-level information on the proportional use of the 32
foraging niches, each of which is defined as a particular foraging
strategy within a specific dietary category (e.g., invertebrate feeding is
subdivided into 7 foraging niches based on different foraging behaviours).
The data includes information for all extant bird species (Class Aves). To
allow integration with global phylogenies and other data resources
published in future, we align species-level niche data with four different
taxonomic treatments: BirdTree (9,993 species), Clements/eBird (10,661
species), BirdLife International (10,999 species), and the new AviList
taxonomy (10,981 species).