carnivora: Carnivora body sizes and life history traits

carnivoraR Documentation

Carnivora body sizes and life history traits

Description

Dataset adapted from Gittleman (1986), including 2 morphological variables (body and brain sizes), 8 life history traits variables and 4 taxonomic variables.

Usage

data(carnivora)

Format

A data frame with 112 observations on 17 variables.

[,1] Order factor Carnivora order
[,2] SuperFamily factor Super family (Caniformia or Feliformia)
[,3] Family factor Carnivora family
[,4] Genus factor Carnivora genus
[,5] Species factor Carnivora species
[,6] FW numeric Female body weight (kg)
[,7] SW numeric Average body weight of adult male and adult female (kg)
[,8] FB numeric Female brain weight (g)
[,9] SB numeric Average brain weight of adult male and adult female (g)
[,10] LS numeric Litter size
[,11] GL numeric Gestation length (days)
[,12] BW numeric Birth weigth (g)
[,13] WA numeric Weaning age (days)
[,14] AI numeric Age of independance (days)
[,15] LY numeric Longevity (months)
[,16] AM numeric Age of sexual maturity (days)
[,17] IB numeric Inter-birth interval (months)

Source

Gittleman, J. L. (1986) Carnivore life history patterns: allometric, phylogenetic and ecological associations. American Naturalist, 127: 744–771.

Examples

data(carnivora)
## Fig. 1 in Gittleman (1986):
plot(carnivora$BW ~ carnivora$FW, pch = (1:8)[carnivora$Family], log = "xy",
     xlab = "Female body weight (kg)", ylab = "Birth weigth (g)",
     ylim = c(1, 2000))
legend("bottomright", legend = levels(carnivora$Family), pch = 1:8)
plot(carnivora$BW ~ carnivora$FB, pch = (1:8)[carnivora$Family], log = "xy",
     xlab = "Female brain weight (g)", ylab = "Birth weigth (g)",
     ylim = c(1, 2000))
legend("bottomright", legend = levels(carnivora$Family), pch = 1:8)

ape documentation built on March 31, 2023, 6:56 p.m.