Data from: Ecological and evolutionary significance of primates’ most consumed plant families

Angiosperms have been essential components of primate diet for millions of years, but the relative importance of different angiosperm families in primate diets and their influence on primate evolution and ecology remains unclear. Here, we assess the contribution and ecological and evolutionary significance of plant families to the diets of wild primates based on an unprecedented dietary dataset of over 8,000 dietary records, compiled from 140 primary sources encompassing 109 primate species. Out of the 204 angiosperm plant families recorded in primate diets, only ten families were consumed by >50% of primate species. Plants from the Moraceae and Fabaceae were the most widely and most frequently consumed and represent keystone resources of primates. Over three-quarters of primates in our dataset were recorded to feed on these two families, and combined, they make up close to 12% of primate diets on average. By analyzing the relative proportion of different plant parts consumed, we find that Moraceae was mainly consumed as fruit and Fabaceae as non-fruit parts, and consumption of these two families showed phylogenetic signal among primates. In particular, we also find that Moraceae consumption was associated with smaller home range sizes, even though frugivorous primates tend to have larger home ranges compared to folivores, possibly due to the year-round availability of Moraceae fruits and spatial asynchrony in their phenology. Our results suggest that primates may be intricately and subtly shaped by the plant families that they consume, and highlight the importance of dietary studies in understanding primate ecology and evolution.