Figure 5.

External validation of extrapolating diet knowledge for two mammal orders that contain species which use a broad range of either plant or animal diet categories. (A) Rodentia (here rodents such as African dormice, gerbils, mice, etc.) are predominantly herbivorous and insectivorous, but different species use different plant diet categories. (B) Carnivora (mostly represented here by genets and mongooses) predominantly feed on animal material, but the importance of different animal diet categories varies among species. Bars illustrate the percentage of correctly predicted diet ranks of each of the 16 diet categories for rank 1 data (gray bars) and for rank 1 and 2 data combined (white bars). Numbers below diet categories give the sample size (number of species) for each validation. The results of this external validation are based on the Mammals of Africa (see text for details).