What is a mammalian omnivore? Insights into terrestrial mammalian diet diversity, body mass and evolution.

ABSTRACT: Mammalian omnivores are a broad group of species that are often treated uniformly in ecological studies. Here, we incorporate omnivorous dietary differences to investigate previously found mammalian macroevolutionary and macroecological trends. We investigate the frequency with which vertebrate prey, invertebrate prey, fibrous plant material and non-fibrous plant material co-occur in the diets of terrestrial mammals. We quantify the body size distributions and phylogenetic signal of different omnivorous diets and use multistate reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to assess the transition rates between diets on the mammalian phylogenetic tree. We find omnivores that consume all four food types are relatively rare, as most omnivores consume only invertebrate prey and non-fibrous

SUBMITTER: Reuter DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9890115 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature