A few weeks back, we reported the death of an anole at the hands–er, pedipalps–of a spider. Now Janson Jones reports the opposite.
More generally, we know that spiders are a very common prey item in the diet of many anole species, but how often the reverse is true is unknown.
Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.
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Gerrut Norval
We found that spider make up about 10% of the diet of Anolis sagrei in Taiwan. But, unlike in other studies, in which it was found that this lizard species preyed mainly on web spiders, the majority of the spiders in our studies were ground-living species (Norval et al., 2007; Huang et al., 2008). We also found that predation on some families, such jumping spiders (Salticidae), was significant enough to reduce the abundance of these spiders. We are still awaiting the first reports of spiders preying on brown anoles in Taiwan.