DOI: 10.5061/dryad.612jm646j
title: Diets of the introduced domestic cat (Felis catus), red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and dingo (Canis familiaris) in Australia

description: The introduction of the domestic cat and the red fox has devastated
 Australian native fauna. We synthesised Australian diet analyses to
 identify traits of prey species in cat, fox, and dingo diets, which prey
 was more frequent or distinctive to the diet of each predator, and
 quantified dietary overlap. Nearly half (45%) of all Australian
 terrestrial mammal, bird, and reptile species occurred in the diets of one
 or more predators. Cat and dingo diets overlapped the least (0.64±0.27,
 n=24 location/time points) and the cat diet changed little over 55 years
 of study. Cats were more likely to have eaten birds, reptiles, and small
 mammals than foxes or dingoes. The dingo's diet remained constant
 over 53 years and constituted the largest mammal, bird, and reptile prey,
 including more macropods/potoroids, wombats, monotremes, and
 bandicoots/bilbies than cats or foxes. Fox diet had greater overlap with
 both cats (0.79±0.20, n=37) and dingoes (0.73±0.21, n=42), fewer
 distinctive items (plant material, possums/gliders), and significant
 spatial heterogeneity over 69 years, suggesting prey switching (especially
 of mammal prey) to mitigate competition. Our study reinforced concerns
 about mesopredator impacts on scarce/threatened species and the need to
 control foxes and cats for fauna conservation. However, extensive dietary
 overlap and low incidence of mesopredators in dingo diets precluded the
 resolution of the debate about possible dingo suppression of foxes and
 cats.
description: We systematically searched the literature for empirical data on
 the frequency of occurrence (FOO; the proportion of all samples that
 contain the diet item) of foods consumed by each of the three predator
 species and traced all citations for further potential sources, including
 journal articles, book chapters, theses, unpublished reports, and
 contacted authors directly where possible for clarification and additional
 data. For the 157 studies using classical morphological methods (macro and
 microhistology) to identify diet items, we calculated FOO data for 421
 location–time point combinations for 264 sites across Australia
 for: (i) 7 main food categories: all mammals (summed),
 birds, squamate reptiles (‘squamates’), amphibians (frogs), fish,
 invertebrates and plant material, and (ii) 15 broad
 mammal taxonomic groups:  - Nine native mammal
 taxonomic groups – dasyurids (Family Dasyuridae); possums and
 gliders (Suborder Phalangerida); macropods and potoroids (Suborder
 Macropodiformes); bandicoots and bilbies (Order Peramelemorphia);
 koalas<em> Phascolarctos cinereus</em> (Goldfuss); wombats
 (<em>Lasiorhinus </em>spp., bare-nosed wombat
 <em>Vombatus ursinus</em> (Shaw)); bats (Order Chiroptera);
 monotremes (short-beaked echidna <em>Tachyglossus
 aculeatus</em> (Shaw) and platypus <em>Ornithorhynchus
 anatinus</em> (Shaw)); and marsupial moles
 (<em>Notoryctes</em> spp.). Data were insufficient for the
 numbat (<em>Myrmecobius fasciatus</em> Waterhouse), which has
 a limited geographical range. - Two introduced mammal
 categories – lagomorphs (European rabbit and European brown
 hare, <em>Lepus europaeus</em> Pallas), and livestock. These
 included farmed (mostly sheep, cattle, and goat <em>Capra
 hircus</em> Linnaeus) and feral livestock, some likely to have been
 scavenged (from most to least commonly recorded: sheep, cattle, feral pig
 <em>Sus scrofa</em> Linnaeus, camel, goat, sambar deer
 <em>Cervus unicolor</em> Kerr, chital deer <em>Axis
 axis</em> (Erxleben), horse, water buffalo <em>Bubalus
 bubalis</em> Linnaeus, fallow deer <em>Dama dama</em>
 (Linnaeus), hog deer <em>Axis porcinus</em> (Zimmermann), red
 deer <em>Cervus elaphus</em> Linnaeus and donkey
 <em>Equus asinus</em> Linnaeus). Rodents –
 FOOs were mostly calculated separately for introduced and native species
 but were analysed together because species were not always distinguished.
 Their separate FOO values contributed to the calculations of the FOO of
 native vs. introduced species. The three predator
 species themselves.
description: # Diets of the introduced domestic cat (Felis catus), red fox (Vulpes
 vulpes) and dingo (Canis familiaris) in Australia Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.612jm646j](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.612jm646j) ##
 Description of the data and file structure **Distinctive diets of
 eutherian predators in Australia** We synthesised Australian diet analyses
 to identify traits of prey species in cat, fox and dingo diets, which prey
 were more frequent or distinctive to the diet of each predator, and
 quantified dietary overlap. ### Files and variables #### File:
 Appendix_of_studies.xlsx, Appendix_of_studies.csv, Appendix_of_studies.pdf
 **Description:** Main data file in three formats | Variable | Description
 | | :-------------------- |
 :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Predator | species | | Location | study site description | | State | Australian state or territory | | Source | Reference (see Appendix\_list\_of\_studies.docx) | | Latitude | Coordinates | | Longitude | Coordinates | | mainland | Mainland (1) or island (0) | | modified | Modified landscapes (e.g. tips) | | samples | samples (no data for Mahood 1980) | | sample.type | Stomachs (1) or Scat (0) or proportion of each (no data for Mahood 1980) | | num | Number of samples (no data for Mahood 1980) | | FOO\_Mammal | Frequency of Occurrence of all mammals | | FOO\_NativeMammal | Frequency of Occurrence of native mammals | | FOO\_IntroducedMammal | Frequency of Occurrence of introduced mammals | | FOO\_RabbitHare | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Rodent | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_NativeRodent | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_IntroducedRodent | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Livestock | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_MacropodPotoroo | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_PossumGlider | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Bandicoot | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Dasyurid | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Numbat | Frequency of Occurrence of this species | | FOO\_Monotreme | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Bat | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Notoryctes | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Koala | Frequency of Occurrence of this species | | FOO\_Wombat | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_DingoDog | Frequency of Occurrence of this species | | FOO\_Fox | Frequency of Occurrence of this species | | FOO\_Cat | Frequency of Occurrence of this species | | FOO\_Bird | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Reptile | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Frog | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Fish | Frequency of Occurrence of these species | | FOO\_Invertebrate | Frequency of Occurrence of Invertebrates | | FOO\_Plant | Frequency of Occurrence of plant material | | Collection\_MIDPOINT | Mid point between sample collection start and end | | Include\_MAIN | Included in the analysis of main diet categories | | Include\_MAMMALS | Included in the analysis of mammal prey | | IBRA\_code | Biogeographic region | | IBRA\_name | Biogeographic region | | MEAN\_map | mean annual precipitation (mm) | | MEAN\_mat | mean annual temperature (C) | | dist\_to\_coast\_km | Distance to the nearest coastline | | MEAN\_cover | Average vegetation cover | | hum\_pop\_den\_5k | Human population density | | rugged\_5k | Terrain ruggedness | | MAJORITY\_vast | Dominant category for the Vegetation Assets, States and Transitions (VAST) classification of Australian vegetation  | #### File: Appendix_list_of_studies.docx **Description:** Reference list of studies. ## Code/software No code is provided with this dataset. Frequency of occurrence models were fitted using a Tweedie distribution, which applies a gamma distribution to the data that accounts for true zeros (absence of particular prey species), using the ‘tweedie’ package in R. Presence/absence models were fitted using a binomial generalised linear model (*glm*) in the ‘lme4’ package [108] in R. The effects of predictor variables on diet overlap for the best model were visualised using *ggpredict* from the ‘ggeffects’ package in R, when all other variables are held constant at their mean/median value. ### (a)    Pianka’s index of dietary overlap For studies that presented simultaneously-collected diet data on more than one predator species, we calculated dietary overlap, *O~ij~* using the ‘spaa’ package in R. We analysed overlap data using a generalised linear model in ‘lme4’ (followed by Tukey’s post hoc analysis using the ‘emmeans’ package) for associations by predator species. We tested for collinearity between predictors using the *vif* function in the ‘car’ package in R. The effects of predictor variables on diet overlap for the best model were visualised using *ggpredict*, in which all other variables are held constant at their mean/median value. ### (c)     Diet composition and distinctiveness To test for between-species differences in overall diet composition (including animals taken as either prey or carrion), we carried out non-parametric permutational ANOVA (PERMANOVA) using the *adonis* function in the ‘vegan’ package in R. To identify bias due to sample type, we carried out a Similarity Percentage (SIMPER) analysis on the differences between analyses of stomach contents and scats. We then used the *multipatt* function in the ‘indicspecies’ package in R to identify the diet categories most strongly associated with the diets of each predator or groups (pairs in this case) of predators. ### (d)    Mantel test to identify trends with spatial or temporal separation A Mantel test was carried out to analyse spatial and temporal influences on diet composition for (i) the 7 main food categories and (ii) the 15 broad mammal taxa (as described above).. ### (e)    GLM to compare FOO lagomorphs with time and RHDV We carried out Spearman’s rank order correlation analysis to identify which prey types changed in frequency of occurrence over time. This was followed by a generalised linear model (GLM) with Tukey’s post hoc analysis (using the ‘emmeans’ package) to compare lagomorph FOO before and after the vectored introduction of the lagovirus, Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV) in 1995, and then after introduction of more lethal strains of the virus since 2015. ## Access information Other publicly accessible locations of the data: * Appendix of studies Excel worksheet Data was derived from the following sources: * Appendix list of studies Word document