2.6 Correlations between prey items and relative specialization
For each scat, prey item proportions (number of sequences per prey
species / total number of sequences generated) were lumped into orders
and summed. We then performed correlations between the proportion of the
diet that each order comprised in each sample and
the \(\text{PS}_{i}\) for that
sample. To examine if similar patterns occurred in both sexes, the
analysis above was completed for male and females separately. We used
the Bonferroni method to correct alpha for multiple comparisons (alpha
values are specified in table captions). Additionally, to determine if
benthic species were associated with a more specialist diet, a
correlation was run between the proportion benthic prey and
specialization value for each scat. Due to the heteroscedasticity of the
dataset, we used Spearman’s rank method for all correlations (Sokal &
Rohlf, 2012). All correlation analysis was conducted in R 3.3.1. Because
smaller \(\text{PS}_{i}\) values indicate higher levels of
specialization, a negative correlation value suggests a positive
relationship with specialization.