DOI: 10.5061/dryad.83bk3j9v7
title: Data from: Unwrapping broken tails: Biological and environmental correlates of predation pressure in limbless reptiles

description: Studying species interactions in nature often requires elaborate logistics
 and intense fieldwork. The difficulties in such task might hinder our
 ability to answer questions on how biotic interactions change with the
 environment. Fortunately, a workaround to this problem lies within
 scientific collections. For some animals, the inspection of preserved
 specimens can reveal the scars of past antagonistic encounters, such as
 predation attempts. A common defensive behaviour that leaves scars on
 animals is autotomy, the loss of a body appendage to escape predation. By
 knowing the collection site of preserved specimens, it is possible to
 assess the influence of organismal biology and the surrounding environment
 in the occurrence of autotomy. We produced data on tail loss for 8,189
 preserved specimens of 33 snake and 11 amphisbaenian species to
 investigate biological and environmental correlates of autotomy in
 reptiles. We applied generalized linear mixed effect models to evaluate
 whether body size, sex, life-stage, habitat use, activity pattern, biome,
 tropicality, temperature, and precipitation affect the probability of tail
 loss in limbless reptiles. We observed autotomy in 23.6% of examined
 specimens, with 18.7% of amphisbaenian and 33.4% of snake specimens
 showing tail loss. Probability of tail loss did not differ between snakes
 and amphisbaenians, but it was higher among large-sized specimens,
 particularly in adults and females. Chance of tail loss was higher for
 diurnal and arboreal species, and among specimens collected in warmer
 regions, but it was unaffected by biome, precipitation, and tropicality.
 Autotomy in limbless reptiles was affected by size-dependent factors that
 interplay with ontogeny and sexual dimorphism, although size-independent
 effects of life-stage and sex also shaped behavioural responses to
 predators. The increase in probability of tail loss with verticality and
 diurnality suggests a risk-balance mechanism between species habitat use
 and activity pattern. Although autotomy is more likely in warmer regions,
 it seems unrelated to seasonal differences in snakes and amphisbaenians
 activity. Our findings reveal several processes related to predator-prey
 interactions involving limbless reptiles, demonstrating the importance of
 scientific collections to unveil ecological mechanisms at different
 spatio-temporal scales.
description: We examined a total of 8,847
 preserved specimens of 58 snake and 22 amphisbaenian species, deposited in
 61 collections from 11 countries (when not specified, acronyms follow
 Sabaj, 2020,
 https://doi.org/10.1643/ASIHCODONS2020): Argentina: FML. Brazil: AAGARDA (Adrian A. Garda, field series, transferred to CHUFPB), CEPB, CHUFPB, CHUFPI, CHUFS, CHUFSC, CHUNB, CRIB (Coleção de Referência, Instituto Butantan), CZDP (Coleção Zoológica do Delta do Parnaíba), CZGB, FUNED, IBSP, IEPA, INPA, LZV, MBML, MCN, MCNR, MCP, MHNCI, MNRJ, MPEG, MTR (Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues, field series [to be transferred to MZUSP]), MZUESC, MZUFV, MZUSP, UFACF, UFC, UFG, UFMG-R, UFMT-R, UFPE, UFRGS, UFRN, ULBRA-TO (Centro Universitário Luterano de Palmas, Universidade Luterana do Brasil), URCA, ZUEC, ZUFMS, ZUFSM. Colombia: IAvH-R, ICN, MLS, MPUJ, UIS-R. Ecuador: MZUA, QCAZ. France: MNHN. Germany: ZSM. Paraguay: CZCEN, CZPLT, IIBP, MNHNP. Spain: DBAG. United Kingdom: NHMUK. Uruguay: MHMN, ZVC-R. USA: AMNH, CAS, FMNH, USNM. After removing species with low sample size, the dataset used in the analyses included 8,189 preserved specimens of 33 snake and 11 amphisbaenian species. All analyses in this study were performed in the software R v. 4.2.0.
description: The R-script is commented by the authors and contains all code
 used to manipulate and analyse data tables, and create the figures in the
 manuscript. Seven files are provided: 1.
 Moura_et_al_JAE_2022.R: commented R script used to run the
 analyses. 2. CompiledDataCleanned.txt: raw data on
 8,847 specimens examined on this study (metadata informed within the
 above-mentioned R script). 3.
 ConsensusTree_43taxa.Rdata: trimmed consensus phylogeny for the species
 used in this study, derived from Tonini et al. (2016, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.db005). 4. Subset100Trees_43taxa.Rdata: subset of 100 trimmed phylogenies including the species used in this study, derived from Tonini et al. (2016, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.db005). 5. GLMM_output_group_StdSVL.Rdata: output files for the Generalised Linear Mixed Effect models (GLMM) appliled in this study (i.e., main text results). 6. GLMM_output_StdSVL.Rdata: output files for the GLMM appliled in this study, but using a different rescaling for one predictor (body size). 7. PhyloCorrelogram.Rdata: output of average phylogenetic correlograms for GLMM residuals across the subset of 100 trimmed phylogenies.