Data from: Limited dietary overlap amongst resident Arctic herbivores in winter - complementary insights from complementary methods ...

• Main Authors: Schmidt, Niels M., Mosbacher, Jesper B., Vesterinen, Eero J., Roslin, Tomas, Michelsen, Anders
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2018
• Subjects: Anthropocene; Lagopus mutus; Ovibos moschatus; Lepus arcticus; Tundra; Arctic; Greenland; Arctic hare; muskox; ovibos moschatus; rock ptarmigan
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.48t6710; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.48t6710

Snow may prevent Arctic herbivores from accessing their forage in winter, forcing them to aggregate in the few patches with limited snow. In High Arctic Greenland, Arctic hare and rock ptarmigan often forage in muskox feeding craters. We therefore hypothesized that due to limited availability of forage, the dietary niches of these resident herbivores overlap considerably, and that the overlap increases as winter progresses. To test this, we analyzed fecal samples collected in early and late winter. We used molecular analysis to identify the plant taxa consumed, and stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen to quantify the dietary niche breadth and dietary overlap. The plant taxa found indicated only limited dietary differentiation between the herbivores. As expected, dietary niches exhibited a strong contraction from early to late winter, especially for rock ptarmigan. This may indicate increasing reliance on particular plant resources as winter progresses. In early winter, the diet of rock ptarmigan ... : ZOTUsDenoised, chimera-filtered, and clustered ZOTUs from the sequence data.ZOTUtabsZOTUtab linking ZOTUs to samples (and replicates).Raw Fastq filesRaw fastq files from the first (primers pairs ch, gh, and ITS; all samples pooled and then index-tagged) and second run (primer pairs ch and gh, all reactions and replicates tagged individually) for the study. The file names refer to the sample and replicate as follows: HA=Arctic hare, PT=ptarmigan, MX=muskox; A=replicate 1; B=replicate 2; E=efterår (late winter); and F=förår (early winter)Raw_Fastq_files.tar.gz ...