DOI: 10.5061/dryad.f18k5
title: Data from: Molecular detection of invertebrate prey in vertebrate diets: trophic ecology of Caribbean island lizards

description: Understanding community assembly and population dynamics frequently
 requires detailed knowledge of food web structure. For many consumers,
 obtaining precise information about diet composition has traditionally
 required sacrificing animals or other highly invasive procedures,
 generating tension between maintaining intact study populations and
 knowing what they eat. We developed 16S mitochondrial DNA sequencing
 methods to identify arthropods in the diets of generalist vertebrate
 predators without requiring a blocking primer. We demonstrate the utility
 of these methods for a common Caribbean lizard that has been intensively
 studied in the context of small island food webs: Anolis sagrei (a
 semi-arboreal ‘trunk-ground’ anole ecomorph). Novel PCR primers were
 identified in silico and tested in vitro. Illumina sequencing successfully
 characterized the arthropod component of 168 faecal DNA samples collected
 during three field trips spanning 12 months, revealing 217 molecular
 operational taxonomic units (mOTUs) from at least nine arthropod orders
 (including Araneae, Blattodea, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera,
 Isoptera, Lepidoptera and Orthoptera). Three mOTUs (one beetle, one
 cockroach and one ant) were particularly frequent, occurring in ≥50% of
 samples, but the majority of mOTUs were infrequent (180, or 83%, occurred
 in ≤5% of samples). Species accumulation curves showed that dietary
 richness and composition were similar between size-dimorphic sexes;
 however, female lizards had greater per-sample dietary richness than
 males. Overall diet composition (but not richness) was significantly
 different across seasons, and we found more pronounced interindividual
 variation in December than in May. These methods will be generally useful
 in characterizing the diets of diverse insectivorous vertebrates.
description: Dietary mOTU
 sequencesFinal arthropod mOTUs
 used in the analysis are represented by the 16S DNA sequences in this
 fasta file. Sequence names in the fasta file correspond to mOTU
 identifiers (Table S2).DietarySequences.fastaMetabarcode sequence data and MID tags (1 of 4)Sequence data obtained DNA metabarcoding of Anolis sagrei fecal samples. The ReadMe file contains "MID" tag identifiers used to demultiplex samples with the Obitools software prior to analysis. This is sequence data file one of four used in this publication.Galaxy232-Barcode_Splitter_on_data_213_data_229_and_data_214_TRK-C.fastqsangerMetabarcode sequence data and MID tags (2 of 4)Sequence data obtained DNA metabarcoding of Anolis sagrei fecal samples. The ReadMe file contains "MID" tag identifiers used to demultiplex samples with the Obitools software prior to analysis. This is sequence data file one of four used in this publication.Galaxy233-Barcode_Splitter_on_data_213_data_229_and_data_214_TRK-D.fastqsangerMetabarcode sequence data and MID tags (3 of 4)Sequence data obtained DNA metabarcoding of Anolis sagrei fecal samples. The ReadMe file contains "MID" tag identifiers used to demultiplex samples with the Obitools software prior to analysis. This is sequence data file one of four used in this publication.Galaxy254-Barcode_Splitter_on_data_243_data_242_and_data_244_TK09.fastqsangerMetabarcode sequence data and MID tags (4 of 4)Sequence data obtained DNA metabarcoding of Anolis sagrei fecal samples. The ReadMe file contains "MID" tag identifiers used to demultiplex samples with the Obitools software prior to analysis. This is sequence data file one of four used in this publication.Galaxy253-Barcode_Splitter_on_data_243_data_242_and_data_244_TK10.fastqsanger