**1. Introduction**

Many recent studies have focused on the diet of freshwater turtles worldwide, including studies from North America [1,2], South America [3], Europe [4,5], Asia [6], and

**Citation:** Luiselli, L.; Demaya, G.S.; Benansio, J.S.; Petrozzi, F.; Akani, G.C.; Eniang, E.A.; Ajong, S.N.; Di Vittorio, M.; Amadi, N.; Dendi, D. A Comparative Analysis of the Diets of a Genus of Freshwater Turtles across Africa. *Diversity* **2021**, *13*, 165. https://doi.org/10.3390/d13040165

Academic Editor: Michael Wink

Received: 10 March 2021 Accepted: 8 April 2021 Published: 12 April 2021

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Africa [7], but most species remain little known and there is virtually no study summarizing from a quantitative view the dietary characteristics of any turtle family. However, these kinds of reviews/meta-analyses may uncover life-history aspects that remain hidden in individual studies at the local scale, thus considerably enhancing the knowledge on the diversity of ecological strategies of freshwater turtles worldwide.

*Pelusios* is an Afrotropical endemic genus of freshwater turtles (Testudines: Pleurodira) that have adapted to a variety of habitats, with savannahs and forests being their two main habitat types [8]. Although considered generally carnivorous [8], these turtles have rarely been subjected to detailed field surveys for determining their quantitative diet [9]. Because of their wide distribution and their occurrence in divergent habitat types, the Pelomedusidae species may constitute an ideal model of study for assessing the extent of variation in the foraging ecology of tropical freshwater turtles.

In this paper, by using both the literature and original data, we present a preliminary analysis of the diet of several *Pelusios* populations belonging to four distinct species (Figure 1): three *P. adansonii* populations from South Sudan, one *P. nanus* from Zambia, seven *P. castaneus* from Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and four *P. niger* from Nigeria. Our aims with this paper are also to provide a database that can be used for further, deeper analysis of the feeding habits of *Pelusios* populations across Africa. More explicitly, we ask the following key questions:


**Figure 1.** The four study species: (**a**) *Pelusios niger* from Nigeria; (**b**) *Pelusios nanus* from Zambia; (**c**) *Pelusios castaneus* from Nigeria; (**d**) *Pelusios adansonii* from South Sudan.
