Elevation, rather than land use cause important dietary shifts in the Mediterranean golden eagle

<p> PROJECT DESCRIPTION</p>
<p> Apex predators play a crucial role in maintaining ecosystem functioning and biodiversity, so studying their diet is key to understanding habitat dynamics. In the context of global change, predators must adapt to both natural ecological gradients such as elevation, and human-driven impacts, including climate and land use changes.</p>
<p> Using camera traps, we assessed the diet of Mediterranean golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos homeyeri) across the Iberian Peninsula.</p>
<p> We reviewed 520,282 images collected over 1365 monitoring days, spanning 50 distinct reproductive events over four breeding seasons (2017-2020).</p>
<p> We analyzed the frequency and biomass of each prey species in relation to elevation and land use, which have recently experienced significant anthropogenic changes, mostly due to climate change and rural abandonment. Elevation emerged as the primary driver of dietary variation, with consistent shifts across land-use categories.</p>
<p> Lagomorphs and Columbiformes dominated their diet at lower elevation, while wild ungulates, passerines, and reptiles increased at higher elevations. Furthermore, prey diversification was greater at higher elevations for all land uses.</p>
<p> Despite lagomorphs remaining the most consumed prey, wild ungulates (mostly roe deer) and reptiles represented a higher proportion than previous studies. Rural abandonment and climate change are reshaping prey communities in the Iberian Peninsula.</p>
<p> Our findings highlight the high adaptability of golden eagles to changes in prey availability, driven by anthropogenic global change.</p>
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<p> DATA DESCRIPTION</p>
<p> The dataset is part of the AEQUILIBRIUM+ project data from 2017 to 2020. The publicly available information consists of two types: databases on prey, land use, and territorial information, as well as R scripts to perform the study analysis. The published contents are as follows:</p>
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<p> Databases: xlsx format (2 files).</p>
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<p> Scripts: .R format (7 files).</p>