Contrasting three diet datasets for the African brown house snake, <i>Boaedon capensis</i>

Data on the dietary preferences of species can provide important information that deepens our knowledge of their evolutionary history and contemporary ecology.The combination of low detectability and irregular feeding frequency of snakes has limited the resolution of available diet data for many of these species.A variety of methodologies exist for collecting snake feeding data, however, each of these varies in their strengths and biases.Here, we contrast characterisations of the diet of the brown house snake, Boaedon capensis, based on three common approaches to collecting feeding data: 1) examining gut contents from preserved museum specimens, 2) reviewing published literature, and 3) crowdsourcing feeding records from community science platforms.Gut contents included only mammal and reptile prey, presenting a significantly narrower diet breadth (Levins' B a = 0.12) than the community science (Levins' B a = 0.66) and literature (Levins' B a = 0.49) datasets, which both also included amphibian and avian prey.Interpretation of museum data alone conveys that B. capensis has a relatively specialised, mammal-dominated diet whereas the community science and literature datasets indicate a much wider dietary breadth.Our findings reiterate the importance of utilising multiple methods to assess the dietary composition of snakes to provide a more comprehensive understanding of their feeding ecology.