Review of prey taken by anacondas (Squamata, Boidae: Eunectes)

Thomas, Ollie; Allain, Steven J. R.

doi:10.17161/randa.v28i2.15504

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Anacondas ( Eunectes spp.) ambush various terrestrial animals, including reptiles, birds, and mammals (Thomas & Allain, 2021). Terrestrial animals such as agoutis, opossums, monkeys, armadillos, rats, and porcupines were documented in the diet of smooth‐fronted caiman ( Paleosuchus trigonatus ) (Magnusson, da Silva & Lima, 1987) and American crocodile ( Crocodylus acutus ) (Balaguera‐Reina et al ., 2018), while large herbivores, including wildebeest and zebra, fall prey to Nile crocodiles ( Crocodylus niloticus ) (Subalusky et al ., 2017).…”

Section: Influence On the Freshwater Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Freshwater megafauna shape ecosystems and facilitate restoration

He,

Svenning,

Chen

et al. 2024

Biological Reviews

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Freshwater megafauna, such as sturgeons, giant catfishes, river dolphins, hippopotami, crocodylians, large turtles, and giant salamanders, have experienced severe population declines and range contractions worldwide. Although there is an increasing number of studies investigating the causes of megafauna losses in fresh waters, little attention has been paid to synthesising the impacts of megafauna on the abiotic environment and other organisms in freshwater ecosystems, and hence the consequences of losing these species. This limited understanding may impede the development of policies and actions for their conservation and restoration. In this review, we synthesise how megafauna shape ecological processes in freshwater ecosystems and discuss their potential for enhancing ecosystem restoration. Through activities such as movement, burrowing, and dam and nest building, megafauna have a profound influence on the extent of water bodies, flow dynamics, and the physical structure of shorelines and substrata, increasing habitat heterogeneity. They enhance nutrient cycling within fresh waters, and cross‐ecosystem flows of material, through foraging and reproduction activities. Freshwater megafauna are highly connected to other freshwater organisms via direct consumption of species at different trophic levels, indirect trophic cascades, and through their influence on habitat structure. The literature documenting the ecological impacts of freshwater megafauna is not evenly distributed among species, regions, and types of ecological impacts, with a lack of quantitative evidence for large fish, crocodylians, and turtles in the Global South and their impacts on nutrient flows and food‐web structure. In addition, population decline, range contraction, and the loss of large individuals have reduced the extent and magnitude of megafaunal impacts in freshwater ecosystems, rendering a posteriori evaluation more difficult. We propose that reinstating freshwater megafauna populations holds the potential for restoring key ecological processes such as disturbances, trophic cascades, and species dispersal, which will, in turn, promote overall biodiversity and enhance nature's contributions to people. Challenges for restoration actions include the shifting baseline syndrome, potential human–megafauna competition for habitats and resources, damage to property, and risk to human life. The current lack of historical baselines for natural distributions and population sizes of freshwater megafauna, their life history, trophic interactions with other freshwater species, and interactions with humans necessitates further investigation. Addressing these knowledge gaps will improve our understanding of the ecological roles of freshwater megafauna and support their full potential for facilitating the development of effective conservation and restoration strategies to achieve the coexistence of humans and megafauna.

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Section: Influence On the Freshwater Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Freshwater megafauna shape ecosystems and facilitate restoration

He,

Svenning,

Chen

et al. 2024

Biological Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This diet includes fish, birds, reptiles (caimans and turtles), and mammals (agoutes, pacas, tapirs, capybara, peccaries, deer, etc.). There are also reports that green anacondas feed by hunting prey animals over 40 kg, which rarely happens [ 61 ]. Green anacondas spend most of their time in or around water.…”

Section: Green Anaconda Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Anaconda Optimization: A New Bio-Inspired Metaheuristic Algorithm for Solving Optimization Problems

2023

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A new metaheuristic algorithm called green anaconda optimization (GAO) which imitates the natural behavior of green anacondas has been designed. The fundamental inspiration for GAO is the mechanism of recognizing the position of the female species by the male species during the mating season and the hunting strategy of green anacondas. GAO’s mathematical modeling is presented based on the simulation of these two strategies of green anacondas in two phases of exploration and exploitation. The effectiveness of the proposed GAO approach in solving optimization problems is evaluated on twenty-nine objective functions from the CEC 2017 test suite and the CEC 2019 test suite. The efficiency of GAO in providing solutions for optimization problems is compared with the performance of twelve well-known metaheuristic algorithms. The simulation results show that the proposed GAO approach has a high capability in exploration, exploitation, and creating a balance between them and performs better compared to competitor algorithms. In addition, the implementation of GAO on twenty-one optimization problems from the CEC 2011 test suite indicates the effective capability of the proposed approach in handling real-world applications.

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“…Moreover, as detailed above for colubrids whose diets include prey types II–IV, often only longer individuals with wider gapes take birds (see also Rodríguez and Drummond, 2000). Nonetheless, serpent taxa for which feathered reptiles are dietary mainstays include anacondas ( Eunectes ; Rivas, 2020; Thomas and Allain, 2021), Asian catsnakes ( Boiga ; Greene, 1989a), African treesnakes ( Toxicodryas ; Greenbaum et al, 2021), Neotropical birdsnakes ( Phrynonax ; Robinson et al, 2005; Visco and Sherry, 2015; Zuluaga-Isaza et al, 2015), certain island vipers (e.g., Golden Lancehead [ Bothrops insularis ; Marques et al, 2012]), and Round Island Boas ( Casarea dussumieri ; Roesch et al, 2022); some of these same species or close relatives eat bats, another type IV prey (e.g., Esbérard and Vrcibradic, 2007; Szczygiel and Page, 2020). Future research thus could address whether ambushing versus searching snakes consume adults or nestlings and if birds and bats are functionally equivalent prey in terms of MBT.…”

Section: Mass-bulk Theory and Birds As Snake Preymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…References on snake taxa that do not mention RPM or RPB include López Jurado and Caballero (1981), Bea and Braña (1988), Bhupathy and Vijayan (1989), Jones and Whitford (1989), Zug and Ineich (1993), Revault (1996), Shine and Keogh (1996), Luiselli and Akani (1998), Luiselli and Angelici (1998), Rodríguez and Drummond (2000), Hill et al (2001), Holycross et al (2001), Platt et al (2001), Shewchuk and Austin (2001), Clark (2002), Holycross et al (2002), Gardner and Mendelson (2003), Monteiro et al (2006), Machio et al (2010), Gaiarsa et al (2013), Prudente et al (2014), Sparks et al (2015), Carbajal-Márquez et al (2016, 2020), Platt et al (2016), Layloo et al (2017), Prötzel et al (2018), Bringsøe (2019), Berg et al (2020), Bringsøe et al (2020), Cabral et al (2020), Escalante and Acuña (2020), Feldman et al (2020), R. Maritz et al (2020), Vela et al (2020), Vásquez-Cruz (2020), Cochran et al (2021), Conradie and Pinto (2021), Eisfeld et al (2021), Faraone et al (2021), Hoefer et al (2021), Maritz et al (2021a), Mebarki et al (2021), and Thomas and Allain (2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%