Data from: Diet preferences as the cause of individual differences rather than the consequence ...

• Main Authors: Oudman, Thomas, Bijleveld, Allert I., Kavelaars, Marwa M., Dekinga, Anne, Cluderay, John, Piersma, Theunis, Van Gils, Jan A.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2017
• Subjects: radio tag; gut; TOA; shorebirds; behavioural syndrome; diet choice; January 2013; Calidris canutus; waders; Dosinia isocardia; Holocene; Loripes lucinalis; Red Knot
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2s8rr; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.2s8rr

Behavioural variation within a species is usually explained as the consequence of individual variation in physiology. However, new evidence suggests that the arrow of causality may well be in the reverse direction: behaviours such as diet preferences cause the differences in physiological and morphological traits. Recently, diet preferences were proposed to underlie consistent differences in digestive organ mass and movement patterns (patch residence times) in red knots (Calidris canutus islandica). Red knots are molluscivorous and migrant shorebirds for which the size of the muscular stomach (gizzard) is critical for the food processing rate. In this study, red knots (C. c. canutus, n = 46) were caught at Banc d'Arguin, an intertidal flat ecosystem in Mauritania, and released with radio-tags after the measurement of gizzard mass. Using a novel tracking system (time-of-arrival), patch residence times were measured over a period of three weeks. Whether or not gizzard mass determined patch residence times was ... : patchesTable of residence time patches: foraging locations visited by red knots, deployed with radiotransmitters, during the low tide. A description of each column can be found in a separate sheet. Further information is found in the methods section of the publication.benthosTable containing sampled prey items for the red knot, consisting of molluscs of ingestable sizes in the top 4 cm of the sediment. The file contains a separate sheet with column discriptions. More information can be found in the methods section of the publication. ...