selectapref

An R package for assessing animal diets from field selection and experimental dietary preference. While other software has been able to estimate these indices, they have never been brough together in an opensource medium. Currently calculates Forage Ratio, Ivlev’s selectivity, and Manly’s α (with or without replacement). I am currently exploring ideas on how to utilize these indices for human user preferences.

This package has been used for dietary analyses of:

Copepods

The endangered Darwin’s frog

Eurasian otters

Frugivorous birds

Karoo scrub robin

Perlodes intricatus

Red-footed falcons

Stream invertebrate diversity

Utahn fish

Wyoming wolves

Tortoise exclosure

This experiment was done on Egmont Key off the coast of St. Petersburg Florida and examined the effects of gopher tortoise herbivory on plant community composition through exclosure plots, thereby providing areas where tortoises were able to feed and those where they were prohibited.

Tortoise gut passage on seed germination

Passage through animal guts may alter the percentage of seeds germinating, or the time it takes for a seed to germinate (collectively referred to as seed germinability). Plant species from the field site in the above experiment were used in this study examining how the passage of seeds by gopher tortoises alters seed germinability.