Find research datasets worth reusing
Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.
98
datasets available to search
ShareScore release 0.9.0
Dataset results
98 results for “Omnivore”
Supplementing a grain diet with insects instead of fruits sustains the body condition of an omnivorous bird
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: A test of the green wave hypothesis in omnivorous brown bears across North America
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
What is a mammalian omnivore? Insights into terrestrial mammalian diet diversity, body mass, and evolution
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
A fruit diet rather than invertebrate diet maintains a robust innate immunity in an omnivorous tropical songbird
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Diet composition and social environment determine food consumption, phenotype and fitness in an omnivorous insect
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Group recognition in a subsocial extreme omnivore is based on fecal odor preference that is modulated by coprophagy, diet, and learning
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Omnivore diet composition effects on parasite load and host weight
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Flexible, but not enough: How an omnivorous ant copes with macronutrient imbalances
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Dietary niche variation in an invasive omnivore: the effects of habitat on feral pig (Sus scrofa) resource use in Hawaiʻi
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Omnivorous ants are less carnivorous and more protein-limited in exotic plantations
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: The role of nocturnal omnivorous lemurs as seed dispersers in Malagasy rain forests
<p>Fruit-eating animals play important roles as seed dispersal agents in terrestrial systems. Yet, the extent to which seed dispersal by nocturnal omnivores may facilitate germination and the recruitment of plant communities has rarely been investigated. Characterizing their roles in seed dispersal is necessary to provide a more complete picture of how seed dispersal processes affect ecosystem functioning. We investigated the roles and impacts of two species of nocturnal omnivorous lemur species, <em>Microcebus</em> <em>jollyae</em> and <em>M. rufus</em>, on seed dispersal in Madagascar's rain forests, through analysis of fecal samples and germination experiments. Data show that these lemur species, which are among the world's smallest primates, dispersed 22 plant species from various forest strata and that the defecated seeds germinated faster and at higher rates than control seeds for the eight plant species we tested. Even though mouse lemurs dispersed both native and non-native plant species, non-native plant species represented a relatively small proportion (17%). These results demonstrate that overlooked nocturnal omnivores can act as important seed dispersers, which may have critical implications for forest regeneration and the maintenance of plant diversity in fragmented/degraded forests. Finally, we provide critical insights into the previously unobserved behavior and diet of endangered nocturnal lemurs for their effective conservation.</p>
Data from: Conspecifics, not pollen, reduce omnivore prey consumption
Pollen can decrease (via reduced consumption) or increase (via numerical response) an omnivores consumption of animal prey. Although pollen can increase predation pressure through numerical responses of omnivores, pollen may also suppress predation by increasing omnivore interactions with conspecifics. Despite this potential, studies of the impacts of pollen on predation by omnivores often overlook the effect of these tissues on intraspecific interactions between omnivores. We designed three studies to examine how Spartina foliosa pollen and conspecific density impact scale insect prey consumption by ladybeetle (Naemia seriata) omnivores. First, we assessed how pollen impacts scale insect consumption by isolated ladybeetles. Second, we measured how pollen influences ladybeetle prey suppression when numerical responses were possible. Third, because initial experiments suggested the consumption rates of individual ladybeetles depended on conspecific density, we compared per capita consumption rates of ladybeetles across ladybeetle density. Pollen did not influence prey consumption by isolated ladybeetles. When numerical responses were possible, pollen did not influence total predation on prey despite increasing ladybeetle density, suggesting that pollen decreased per capita prey consumption by ladybeetles. The discrepancy between these studies is likely a consequence of differences in ladybeetle density— the presence of only two other conspecifics decreased per capita prey consumption by 76%. Our findings suggest that pollen may not alter the population level effects of omnivores on prey when omnivore numerical responses are offset by reductions in per capita predation rate.
Data from: Diet specialization in an extreme omnivore: nutritional regulation in glucose-averse German cockroaches
Organisms have diverse adaptations for balancing dietary nutrients, but often face trade-offs between ingesting nutrients and toxins in food. While extremely omnivorous cockroaches would seem excluded from such dietary trade-offs, German cockroaches (Blattella germanica) in multiple populations have rapidly evolved a unique dietary specialization – an aversion to glucose, the phagostimulant in toxic baits used for pest control. We used factorial feeding experiments within the geometric framework to test whether glucose-averse (GA) cockroaches with limited access to this critical metabolic fuel have compensatory behavioural and physiological strategies for meeting nutritional requirements. GA cockroaches had severely constrained intake, fat and N mass, and performance on glucose-based diets relative to wild-type (WT) cockroaches and did not appear to exhibit digestive strategies for retaining undereaten nutrients. However, a GA × WT 'hybrid' had lower glucose aversion than GA and greater access to macronutrients within glucose-based diets – while still having lower intake and survival than WT. Given these intermediate foraging constraints, hybrids may be a reservoir for this maladaptive trait in the absence of positive selection and may account for the rapid evolution of this trait following bait application.
Ectothermic omnivores increase herbivory in response to rising temperature
<p>Higher temperatures as a consequence of global climate change may considerably alter trophic interactions. Ectothermic herbivores and carnivores generally ingest more food with rising temperature as their metabolic rates increase with rising temperature. However, omnivorous ectotherms may respond in two ways: quantitatively by consuming more food and qualitatively by altering their degree of herbivory or carnivory through a diet shift. We hypothesize that rising temperature will increase herbivory of ectothermic omnivores as herbivory increases towards the equator. We tested the hypothesis in a freshwater model system in which ectothermic omnivores are prevalent, by applying two approaches, a temperature manipulation experiment and a literature study. We performed feeding trials with a juvenile aquatic ectothermic omnivore (pond snail <i>Lymnaea stagnalis</i>) at different temperatures ranging from 12 to 27°C, supplying them with both animal food and plant material, and directly quantified their consumption rates over time. The results showed that snails cultured at high temperatures (> 21°C) increased the proportion of plant material in their diets after 17 days, which supports our hypothesis. In the literature survey, we found that rising temperature increased herbivory in multiple aquatic animal taxa, including zooplankton, amphibians, crayfish, fish and snails. This suggests that aquatic ectothermic omnivores might commonly increase herbivory with rising temperature. The mechanisms underlying this temperature‐induced diet shift are not sufficiently explained by current theories related to the physiology, metabolism and stoichiometry of omnivores. We propose to incorporate the animals' ontogenetic development in the temperature metabolic stoichiometry hypothesis as a complementary explanation for the diet shift, namely that the diet shift could be due to faster development of the ectotherms and an earlier ontogenetic diet shift at higher temperatures. We conclude that future global warming will most likely alter food webs by increasing the top–down control of aquatic herbivores and omnivores on primary producers.</p>
Data from: Berry production drives bottom-up effects on body mass and reproductive success in an omnivore
Obligate herbivores dominate studies of the effects of climate change on mammals, however there is limited empirical evidence for how changes in the abundance or quality of plant food affect mammalian omnivores. Omnivores can exploit a range of different food resources over the course of a year, but they often rely on seasonally restricted highly nutritious fruiting bodies during critical life stages. Brown bears Ursus arctos in Sweden are dependent on berries for fattening before entering hibernation. We used a ten-year time series to evaluate the effect of temperature and snow on annual variation in berry abundance and how this variation affected bears. We found marked interannual variation in berry production of bilberry Vaccinium myrtillus and lingonberry V. vitis-idaea, that we could attribute in part to temperature during plant dormancy and flowering and precipitation during fruit ripening. Both, autumn weights of female bears and spring weights of yearling bears increased linearly with bilberry abundance. When bilberry abundance was low, lightweight female bears had a lower reproductive success than females in better condition. This effect vanished when food abundance was above average, indicating that lightweight females could compensate for their initial weight during good bilberry years. Our study highlights the importance of considering individuals' dynamic responses to variation in food availability, which leave some more vulnerable to food shortage than others. Individual life-history heterogeneity in response to resource variation likely affects long-term population recruitment. Our findings emphasize that Scandinavian bears can be dependent on a single food resource during a critical period of the year and are therefore less resilient to environmental change than expected for an omnivore. Future climate scenarios predict ambiguous trends for weather covariates that affected crucial stages of berry phenology, preventing a clear prognosis of how climate change may affect long-term bilberry production.
Data from: DNA metabarcoding multiplexing and validation of data accuracy for diet assessment: application to omnivorous diet
Ecological understanding of the role of consumer-resource interactions in natural food webs is limited by the difficulty of accurately and efficiently determining the complex variety of food types animals have eaten in the field. We developed a method based on DNA metabarcoding multiplexing and next-generation sequencing to uncover different taxonomic groups of organisms from complex diet samples. We validated this approach on 91 faeces of a large omnivorous mammal, the brown bear, using DNA metabarcoding markers targeting the plant, vertebrate, and invertebrate components of the diet. We included internal controls in the experiments and performed PCR replication for accuracy validation in post-sequencing data analysis. Using our multiplexing strategy, we significantly simplified the experimental procedure and accurately and concurrently identified different prey DNA corresponding to the targeted taxonomic groups, with ≥60% of taxa of all diet components identified to genus/species level. The systematic application of internal controls and replication was a useful and simple way to evaluate the performance of our experimental procedure, standardize the selection of sequence filtering parameters for each marker data, and validate the accuracy of the results. Our general approach can be adapted to the analysis of dietary samples of various predator species in different ecosystems, for a number of conservation and ecological applications entailing large-scale population level diet assessment through cost effective screening of multiple DNA metabarcodes, and the detection of fine dietary variation among samples or individuals and of rare food items.
Data from: Aquatic omnivores shift their trophic position towards increased plant consumption as plant stoichiometry becomes more similar to their body stoichiometry
Human induced eutrophication has strongly altered aquatic ecosystems. With increasing eutrophication, plant nutrient concentrations increase, making them more attractive as food for herbivores. However, most aquatic consumers are omnivorous. Ecological stoichiometry theory predicts that animals prefer to consume food which has a similar nutrient (N and P) composition or C:nutrient ratio compared to their own bodies, hence omnivorous animals may prefer to eat animal prey instead of plants. We ask whether aquatic omnivores would shift their diet towards more plant consumption when plants are more nutritious and their stoichiometry becomes more similar to the stoichiometry of the omnivore. We hypothesized that: (1) the omnivore increases plant consumption as the plant C:nutrient ratio decreases when there is only plant material available; (2) the omnivore generally prefers animal food over plant material; (3) the omnivore will increase its relative plant consumption as the plant C:nutrient ratio decreases, in the presence of animal food. As a model system, we used the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis (omnivorous consumer), the aquatic plant Potamogeton lucens (plant food to the consumer, cultured at different nutrient regimes to obtain different plant C:nutrient ratios), and the crustacean Gammarus pulex (animal food to the consumer, using freshly dead individuals). When there was only plant material available, the consumers increased their relative consumption rate with decreasing plant C:nutrient ratio from no measurable amount to about 102 mg g-1 day-1. When plant material was offered simultaneously with animal food, even though the omnivores always preferred animal food over plant material, the omnivores still increased their relative intake of plant material as plant C:nutrient ratio decreased, from virtually nothing at the highest to on average 16% of their diet at the lowest plant C:nutrient ratio, with a maximum of 28%. Therefore, we conclude that as nutrient loading increases in aquatic ecosystems, plant-eating omnivorous animals may shift their trophic position towards increased plant consumption and alter the food web structure. As a result, we may observe increased top-down control on aquatic plants.
Data from: Scale-dependent home range optimality for a solitary omnivore
Spatial and temporal heterogeneity are fundamental mechanisms structuring home ranges. Under optimality, an individual should structure their space use economically to maximize fitness. We evaluated support for three hypotheses related to range optimality in American black bears (Ursus americanus), predicting (1) range location on a landscape will correspond with high vegetation productivity, (2) increasing forest fragmentation will result in larger ranges, and (3) increasing proportion of forest and/or mean vegetation productivity will result in smaller ranges. We used black bear radio telemetry data from Michigan (2009-2015), Missouri (2010-2016) and Mississippi (2008-2017), USA. Annual space use excluded winter, and we separated seasonal space use into spring, summer, and fall. We collected data from 143 bears (80 females, 63 males), resulting in 97 annual and 538 seasonal ranges. We used generalized linear mixed models to evaluate productivity (estimated through Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI) selection, and range size (km2) variation between individuals. At the annual scale, black bears consistently selected areas with greater vegetation productivity than the surrounding landscape; yet selection weakened and was more variable seasonally. Opposite to our prediction, we found that increasing fragmentation consistently resulted in smaller ranges; non-forested land covers and forest edges might provide greater abundance or more diverse foods for bears. Ranges with a greater proportion of forest were smaller, likely reflecting an increase in food and cover which could reduce movements, yet there was no support for more productive ranges also being smaller as expected from an area minimizing strategy. Black bears displayed a scale-dependent space use strategy: at larger spatial and temporal scales, productivity acted as the strongest limiting factor and energy maximizing was the dominant strategy, while an area minimizing strategy was exhibited seasonally. We revealed consistent, scale-dependent responses by black bears to environmental conditions, demonstrating the intrinsic plasticity of this adaptable omnivore.
FIGURE 2 in Ultrastructural observation of digestive tract and the adaptative characteristics of dietary habits for ground-dwelling and omnivorous insects
FIGURE 2. Scanning electron microscope observation of the L. taicoun. A–D. Crop (Cr). (The long and thin spines on the inner surface of the crop are pointed out with arrows.) E–M. Proventriculus (Pv). (ST: Sclerotized lobes; MT: Median tooth; SL: Sclerotized lobes) N–P. Gastric caecum (Gc). Q–S. Midgut. T–U. Ileum. V–Y. Malpighian tubules (MTs). (The micro-tracheae and internal microvilli are pointed out with arrows.) Z–BB. Colon. CC–DD. Rectum.
FIGURE 4 in Ultrastructural observation of digestive tract and the adaptative characteristics of dietary habits for ground-dwelling and omnivorous insects
FIGURE 4. Scanning electron microscope observation of the V. micado. A–D. Crop (Cr). (The long and thin spines on the inner surface of the crop are pointed out with arrows.) E–L. Proventriculus (Pv). (ST: Sclerotized lobes; MT: Median tooth; SL: Sclerotized lobes) M–N. Gastric caecum (Gc). O–Q. Midgut. R–T. Ileum. U. Malpighian tubules (MTs). (The micro-tracheae are pointed out with arrows.) V–W. Colon. X–Y. Rectum.
ScienceDex guides
Understand access before you commit
These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.