This repository contains all data and code associated with the publication by Rempel, Siebert and colleagues (2022) on 'Feces consumption by nominally herbivorous fishes in the Caribbean: an underappreciated source of nutrients?'.
In this study, we investigated the species-specific foraging rates of parrotfishes (tribe Scarini within the Labridae) and surgeonfishes (Acanthuridae) on Brown Chromis (Chromis multilineata) fecal pellets compared to other major dietary items and the nutritional value of these fecal pellets. We conducted this study on the Caribbean island of Bonaire in the summer of 2019. The associated datasets include: (1) surveys of the density of parrotfishes, surgeonfishes, and Brown Chromis (both a raw data file and transect-level summary), (2) behavioral observations of coprophagy by parrotfishes and surgeonfishes, (3) Chromis multilineata fecal pellet observations to record the frequency at which they are consumed and coprophagous fish taxa, (4) observations of the defecation rate of Chromis multilineata individuals, and (5) analysis of the nutritional content of Chromis multilineata fecal pellets. Additionally, we conducted a literature search and compiled a summary of the nutritional quality of various red, green, and brown algae, epilithic and endolithic algae matrices, and cyanobacteria to compare the nutritional quality of these food sources to the observed values for Chromis multilineata fecal pellets.
(1) comparing_nutrients.Rmd, (2) fecal_pellet_observations.Rmd, (3) fish_behavioral_observations.Rmd, (4) fish_density_by_species.Rmd. A description of what each file does is provided as a comment within each file at the top of the script.
(1) In the folder 'data', the file 'A1_data_overview.csv' provides a description of the variables associated with each dataset. All other files in the 'data' folder are the data associated with this study, which are also archived with the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/archive/accession/0242462).
(2) The folder 'tables' contains all summary tables from this research (in a .csv/unformatted version), which all save from the respective R markdown files to this folder.
(3) The folder 'figures' contains all figures from this research, which all save from the respective R markdown files to this folder. The subfolder 'icons' contains .png files of the various icons that are incorperated in figures–these icons were created by Hannah Rempel and are licensed using a creative commons license, publicaly usable with proper attribution.