Edinburgh Research Explorer

Gradients in richness and turnover of a forest passerine’s diet prior to breeding

Citation for published version: Shutt, J, Nicholls, J, Trivedi, U, Burgess, M, Stone, G, Hadfield, J & Phillimore, A 2020, 'Gradients in richness and turnover of a forest passerine’s diet prior to breeding: A mixed model approach applied to faecal metabarcoding data ', Molecular Ecology, vol. 29, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15394

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1111/mec.15394

Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer

Document Version: Peer reviewed version

Published In: Molecular Ecology

Publisher Rights Statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Shutt, JD, Nicholls, JA, Trivedi, UH, et al. Gradients in richness and turnover of a forest passerine's diet prior to breeding: A mixed model approach applied to faecal metabarcoding data. Mol Ecol. 2020; 29: 1199– 1213. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15394, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15394. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.

Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

Download date: 05. Oct. 2021 1 Title: Gradients in richness and turnover of a forest passerine’s diet prior to

2 breeding: a mixed model approach applied to faecal metabarcoding data

3

4 Running title: Pre-breeding dietary gradients of a passerine

5

6 Authors: Jack D Shutt1‡, James A Nicholls1,2‡, Urmi H Trivedi3, Malcolm D Burgess4,5,

7 Graham N Stone1, Jarrod D Hadfield1#, Albert B Phillimore1#*

8

9 Affiliations:

10 1 Institute of Evolutionary Biology, The University of Edinburgh, The King’s Buildings,

11 Edinburgh, EH9 3FL, UK;

12 2 Current address: Australian National Collection, CSIRO, Clunies Ross Street,

13 Acton, ACT 2601, Australia;

14 3 Edinburgh Genomics, The University of Edinburgh, The King’s Buildings, Edinburgh,

15 EH9 3FL, UK;

16 4 Centre for Research in Behaviour, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QG, UK;

17 5 RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire, SG19 2DL, UK

18

19 ‡ and # Contributed equally.

20 Correspondence: Albert Phillimore [email protected]

21 Orcid ID’s: JDS 0000-0002-4146-8748, MDB 0000-0003-1288-1231, ABP 0000-0002-

22 6553-1553

23

1 24 Abstract

25 Little is known about the dietary richness and variation of generalist insectivorous

26 species, including birds, due primarily to difficulties in prey identification. Using

27 faecal metabarcoding we provide the most comprehensive analysis of a passerine’s

28 diet to date, identifying the relative magnitudes of biogeographic, habitat and

29 temporal trends in the richness and turnover in diet of Cyanistes caeruleus (blue tit)

30 along a 39-site, 2° latitudinal transect in Scotland. Faecal samples were collected in

31 2014-15 from adult birds roosting in nestboxes prior to nest building. DNA was

32 extracted from 793 samples and we amplified COI and 16S minibarcodes. We

33 identified 432 molecular operational taxo