A global overview on the diet of the dice snake (Natrix tessellata) from a geographical perspective: foraging in atypical habitats and feeding spectrum widening helps colonisation and survival under suboptimal conditions for a piscivorous snake

Abstract

Background: The dice snake (Natrix tessellata Laurenti, 1768) is generally considered to be a fully or partially piscivorous freshwater snake species. The aim of the study was to make the first global overview on the taxonomy and geographical distribution of the species based on own observations, available databases and the special literature. Results: Besides freshwaters, N. tessellata turned out to hunt also in marine and terrestrial habitats predating on at least 29 and 15 species, respectively. On the basis of our data and the literature altogether, 113 prey taxa, mostly fish, were listed but 20% of them were invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. The importance of non-fish species in the diet was especially pronounced in deserts, high mountains and in dry Mediterranean areas. In spite of the wide feeding spectrum, only fish and amphibians were found to be predominant food items over the whole species' range. Fish dominated the catch of the dice snake in most quantitative studies, except one survey in Turkey, where the ratio of non-fish prey items was over 50%. Conclusions: The global analysis of the diet of the dice snake revealed a feeding spectrum characteristically changing over the broad distribution area including non-fish prey as well as taxa from marine and terrestrial habitats. The analysis of the feeding spectrum separated four large geographical units with further distinctions in Central and Eastern Europe. Such diversity helps explain why this species was able to colonise a large and diverse Eurasian range.

Urban oasis? Abundant dice snake (Natrix tessellata) populations along artificial lakeside habitats in urban landscapes

“…Vol. : (0123456789) (Weiperth et al 2014). Research has demonstrated that in heavily urbanized areas, dice snakes can adjust their diet according to the prevalent prey, as seen in their exclusive consumption of invasive fish species in the Danube (Maier et al 2023).…”

Snake life history traits and their association with urban habitat use in a tropical city

“…We did detect a potential signal of phylogenetic biascolubrid species had significantly larger urban niche hypervolumes than elapids. However, this bias may genuinely reflect colubrid snakes' ability to colonise novel habitats (Ivanov 2000;Rodda et al 1992;Weiperth et al 2014), rather than a sampling bias. Colubrids are arguably the most successful radiation of snakes on the planet, boasting the widest phylogenetic diversity and geographic distribution of any snake family (Figueroa et al 2016;O'Shea 2018;Pincheira-Donoso et al 2013).…”

Attempted predation of a cave olm Proteus anguinus by a dice water snake Natrix tessellata, in Bosnia and Herzegovina

“…Natrix tessellata is typically olivegreen or brown in colour with four rows of square-like black blotches along the body, although not all individuals are marked in this way. The species feeds primarily on fish and amphibians (Hutinec & Mebert, 2011;Weiperth et al, 2014), and inhabits both freshwater and saltwater environments such as lakes and shorelines (Speybroeck et al, 2016).…”