Museo de Zoología, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Loja, Ecuador.
Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas y Agropecuarias, Laboratorio de Ecología Tropical y Servicios Ecosistémicos (EcoSs-Lab), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Loja, Ecuador.
PeerJ. 2023 Feb 8;11:e14817. doi: 10.7717/peerj.14817. eCollection 2023.
Thoroughly documenting prey items and diet composition is crucial for understanding a predator's role in the ecosystem. In gape restricted predators, such as snakes, documenting and analyzing the type and size of the prey is important to interpret their ecological role. We describe the diet patterns of a species of venomous snake, the Terciopelo pit viper (), from its Ecuadorian populations. Examining the gastrointestinal contents of museum specimens collected over an extensive area of the Pacific lowlands of Ecuador, we encountered 69 identifiable prey items from four major taxonomic groups (amphibians, centipedes, mammals, and reptiles). We evaluated the observed composition of prey to check for differences between sexes and size-classes. To complement our observations of the Terciopelo species complex throughout their distribution, we carried out a systematic literature review. Our data show an ontogenetic shift in diet, with a transition from more diverse diet in juveniles towards a mammal-specialized diet in adults, and distinct proportion of prey taxa between the sexes in the juvenile size class.
彻底记录猎物和饮食组成对于了解捕食者在生态系统中的作用至关重要。在口裂受限的捕食者（如蛇）中，记录和分析猎物的类型和大小对于解释其生态角色非常重要。我们描述了来自厄瓜多尔太平洋低地广大地区收集的博物馆标本中，一种有毒蛇种——Terciopelo 响尾蛇（）的饮食模式。我们检查了胃肠道内容物，发现了来自四个主要分类群（两栖动物、蜈蚣、哺乳动物和爬行动物）的 69 种可识别的猎物。我们评估了观察到的猎物组成，以检查性别和体型之间的差异。为了补充我们在整个分布范围内对 Terciopelo 物种复合体的观察，我们进行了系统的文献回顾。我们的数据显示饮食存在一个发育变化，从幼年时更多样化的饮食向成年时专门以哺乳动物为食的饮食转变，以及在幼年体型性别之间的猎物分类群比例明显不同。
