Eye size across avian lineages covaries with participation in a specialized foraging behavior

Foraging ecology and visual ability are often strongly related across animal lineages, as many organisms identify food sources by sight. Birds particularly rely upon vision to seek out prey or other food items, leading to the correlated evolution of eye size and foraging behavior. Here, we focus on a specialized foraging tactic termed ‘disturbance foraging’, whereby a responding species exploits prey items flushed by a disturbing species. Using global databases of disturbance-responder species and eye size measurements from museum specimens, we tested the prediction that relative eye size accounting for body mass allometry (a proxy for visual acuity and sensitivity) would be larger in disturbance foragers that require enhanced visual performance to locate escaping prey (N = 463) compared to other species (N = 2840). As predicted, disturbance foragers possessed larger relative eye sizes. Residual eye size was correlated with a gradient in avian foraging behavior, such that species with t..., , # Eye size across avian lineages covaries with participation in a specialized foraging behavior

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.kkwh70shq](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kkwh70shq)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: Supplement.zip

**Description:** 

The archived folder includes:

(1) Species x trait matrix including all variables informing the analysis (\"traits_all.csv\") using the Jetz et al. (2012) Nature taxonomy:

* species_jetz: species name based on the Bird Tree from Jetz et al. (2012) Nature
* family_jetz: family name based on the Bird Tree from Jetz et al. (2012) Nature
* group: species is terrestrial, aquatic, or a raptor
* hab.bin: species specializes in forests (1) or does not specialize in forests (0)
* for.bin: stereotypic foraging behavior - near-sighted/myopic (0) vs. far-sighted/hyperopic (1)
* dist.bin: displays disturbance foraging behavior (1) or does not (0)
* Diet.Carn: From Elton Traits (Wilman et al. 2014). Sum ...,