Dust you shall eat: Complex considerations underlying a simple diet

Animals assimilate macronutrients and mineral nutrients in specific quantities and ratios to maximize fitness. To achieve this, animals must ingest different foods that contain the needed nutrients or facilitate the digestion of those nutrients. We explored how these multidimensional considerations affect the desert isopods (Hemilepistus reaumuri) food selection, using field and laboratory experiments. Wild isopods consumed 3-fold more macronutrient-poor biological soil crust (BSC) than plant litter.  Isopods tightly regulated macronutrient and calcium intake, but not phosphorus when eating the two natural foods and when artificial calcium and phosphorus sources substituted the BSC. Despite the equivalent calcium ingestion, isopods performed better when eating BSC compared to artificial foods. Isopods that consumed BSC sterilized by gamma-radiation ate more but grew slower than isopods that ate live BSC, implying that ingested microorganisms facilitate litter digestion. Our work highlig..., Please refer to the Methods section in the manuscript and Appendix 1, which elaborates on the method even further., , # Dust you shall eat: Complex considerations underlying a simple diet

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tdz08kq57](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tdz08kq57)

The data contains 7 CSV files that are correlated to (and named as) the 4 experiments described in the MS.

All statistical analyses were performed in SPSS ver. 26 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA), therefore no code was uploaded.

**1.     First experiment - 'Feeding observations in the field'**: here we identified the isopod diet choices (selection between their two main food sources) in their natural habitat.

One file is related to this experiment:

1\) '*1- Feeding observations in the field.csv*'

(See **Description of the data and file structure** below)

\* The data collected in this exp is not analyzed nor presented in a figure (only described in the results section).

**2.     Second experiment - 'Dietary choices - laboratory experiment using artificial foods'**: here we characterized the isopods' intake target for protein, carbo...