DOI: 10.5061/dryad.r7sqv9sm6
title: Data from: Ecometrics demonstrates carnivoran community dental traits are filtered by climate

description: Carnivorans, with their diverse diets and unique adaptations such as the
 carnassial tooth, offer insights into the connections between functional
 traits and the climatic and environmental conditions they inhabit. They
 shed light on functional trait-environment relationships at the highest
 trophic levels across a broad range of environmental conditions. In this
 study, we evaluate the relationship between relative blade length (RBL) of
 the lower carnassial tooth, a key dietary adaptation among carnivorans for
 slicing and grinding food items, and climate. We propose RBL as an
 ecometric trait and test the hypothesis that community-level RBL is
 correlated with climate and mediated by environmental effects on food
 availability. Our findings show that communities with higher mean and
 broader variance of RBL are typically located in warmer and wetter
 climates, suggesting a relationship between carnivoran dietary diversity
 and climate. Conversely, communities with a lower mean and narrower
 variance of RBL predominantly occupy cooler, drier places. This indicates
 that community-level carnivoran dietary traits have the potential to serve
 as indicators of environmental conditions. Given the robust fossil record
 associated with carnivorans, we also show how RBL can be used as a proxy
 for reconstructing paleoclimates by examining trait change at seven sites
 in North America to estimate changes in temperature and precipitation over
 time in relation to changes in carnivoran community assembly.
 Understanding the nature of trait-environment relationships can help us
 anticipate biological impacts of ongoing environmental change and the
 geographic regions at the greatest risk of ecological disruption.
description: We conducted an ecometric analysis evaluating the communitywide
 trait-environmental relationship between carnivoran dietary traits
 (relative blade length of the carnassial tooth, RBL) and climate
 conditions (temperature and precipitation). RBL trait values were
 collected from the published literature and were also measured directly
 from museum specimens and published images of museum specimens.
 Temperature and precipitation data were available through WorldClim (BIO1
 and BIO12). Carnivorans were binned into ecological communities using the
 geographic range data available on from the IUCN and were analyzed at 50
 km-equidistant points across the terrestrial globe.
description: # Ecometrics demonstrates carnivoran community dental traits are filtered
 by climate
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.r7sqv9sm6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.r7sqv9sm6) We assessed the community level trait-environment relationships for carnivoran dietary traits with temperature and precipitation using ecometric techniques. ## Description of the data and file structure We are including all data required to run the ecometric analyses and the Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares analyses including the dataset of carnivoran dietary traits from the modern communities and paleo communities, the geographic range shapefiles, the climate data divided into 50 km equidistant points, the phylogeny, and the R code. **TERRESTRIAL_MAMMALS** files provide the geographic range shapefiles available from the IUCN (2020). **RBL_global.csv**: The complete set of modern RBL values and broad dietary categories for each of the carnivorans in the dataset. Include the following columns: * Taxon_name: The Latin binomial for every species in the dataset separated by a hyphen * RBL: The blade length of the mandibular carnassial tooth (m1) relative to the total tooth length * IUCN: The conservation status of each species as assessed by the IUCN including DD (data deficient), LC (least concern), NT (near threatened), VU (vulnerable), EN (endangered) * Percent_vert: The percentage of vertebrate prey in each species diet as assessed by Elton Traits 1.0 database **RBL_global.pgls.csv**: The complete set of modern RBL values along with the percent of vertebrate prey and diet diversity for use in the Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares analyses. Including the following columns:  * Species: The Latin binomial for every species in the dataset separated by a hyphen * Diet_diversity: A numeric value representing the total number of diet categories exploited by the species * RBL: The blade length of the mandibular carnassial tooth (m1) relative to the total tooth length * Percent_vert: The percentage of vertebrate prey in each species diet as assessed by Elton Traits 1.0 database * Percent_invert: The percentage of invertebrate prey in each species diet as assessed by Elton Traits 1.0 database * Diet: Predominant dietary categories for each species including Invert (invertivore), Omn (omnivore), Plant (herbivore), Hypo (hypocarnivore), Meso (mesocarnivore), Hyper (hypercarnivore) **Nyak_BE_phylo.NEX**: The .NEX file associated with the phylogeny from Nyakatura & Bininda-Emonds (2012). **Fossil_RBL.csv**: The complete set of RBL values associated with the paleo sites used in these analyses. Including the following columns: * Site: The fossil site associated with the data point * Lat: Latitude of the fossil site * Long: Longitude of the fossil site * Site location: Broad geographic location of fossil site * Max Age: The oldest estimated age associated with the fossil site (assessed in millions of years) * Min Age: The youngest estimated age associated with the fossil site (assessed in millions of years) * Family: The taxonomic family associated with the species * Genus: The taxonomic genus associated with the species * Species: The specific epithet associated with the species * Binomial: The Latin binomial associated with the species  * RBL: The blade length of the mandibular carnassial tooth (m1) relative to the total tooth length * RBL_source: The citation for the published work providing the RBL measure * Measurement: Any additional notes about the source of the RBL measure  **Continents files** provide the shapefiles needed to map the data **Carnivore_dietary_ecometric.R**: The R code required to run the ecometric and PGLS analyses **Allpointsdata.xls**: The environmental data associated with each 50 km-equidistant point. Including the following columns: * GlobalID: A six-digit numeric code associated with each of the 50-km equidistant sampling points * Latitude: Latitude of the 50-km equidistant sampling points * Longitude: Longitude of the 50-km equidistant sampling points * BIO1: Worldclim variable ([https://www.worldclim.org/data/bioclim.html](https://www.worldclim.org/data/bioclim.html)) annual mean temperature (C) * BIO12: Worldclim variable ([https://www.worldclim.org/data/bioclim.html](https://www.worldclim.org/data/bioclim.html)) annual precipitation (mm) ## Sharing/Access information Data was derived from the following sources: * IUCN. (2020). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2020. [https://www.iucnredlist.org](https://www.iucnredlist.org). Accessed on [21 September 2020]. * Nyakatura, K. & Bininda-Emonds, O.R. (2012). Updating the evolutionary history of Carnivora (Mammalia): a new species-level supertree complete with divergence time estimates. BMC Biology 10:12. ## Code/Software These data were analyzed using R (version 4.2.3). The full set of code used to analyze these data is provided (Carnivore_dietary_ecometric.R).