Data and code from: Birds optimize fruit size consumed near their geographic range limits

Animals can adjust their diet to maximize energy or nutritional intake. For example, birds often target fruits that match their beak size as these can be consumed more efficiently. We hypothesize that pressure to optimize diet — measured as matching between fruit and beak size — increases under stressful environments, such as those determining species’ range edges. Using fruit-consumption and trait information for 97 frugivorous bird and 831 plant species across six continents, we demonstrate that birds feed more frequently on closely size-matched fruits near their geographic range limits. This pattern was particularly strong for highly frugivorous birds, whereas opportunistic frugivores showed no such tendency. These findings highlight how frugivore interactions might respond to stressful conditions and reveal that trait matching may not predict resource use consistently., , , # Data and code from: Birds optimize fruit size consumed near their geographic range limits

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.931zcrjs5](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.931zcrjs5)

## Description of the data and file structure

The scripts and data presented here are part of the article \"Birds optimize fruit size consumed near their geographic range limits\".

# Folders, subfolders and files list and descriptions:

frugivory_range: Main folder containing the scripts and datasets
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\|- *data: Subfolder containing the data necessary for running the analyses*/

\| |- dataframes: subfolder containing the dataframes with our predictor and response variables

\| |- networks: Subfolder containing the data necessary for updating and cleaning the plant-frugivore networks/

\| | |- original_networks: folder to store network data from Martins et al 2022

\| |- trait_data: files containing fruit and bird trait data

\| - *results: Subfolder containing results of our models and sensitivity analyses*/

\|...