Diets of Amazonian crocodilians

Abstract

Caiman crocodilus, Melanosuchus niger and Paleosuchus palpebrosus, which occur around rivers and lakes, have similar diets: small individuals eat invertebrates and large individuals eat invertebrates and fish. Juvenile Paleosuchus trigonatus, which live in small forest streams, eat larger numbers of terrestrial vertebrates than other similar-sized crocodilians. Large P. trigonatus eat many snakes and mammals but few fish. Mean, minimum and maximum sizes of most prey types increase with crocodilian size for all species. There is an inverse relationship between number of terrestrial invertebrates eaten and number of fish eaten by different size classes of Caiman crocodilus, suggesting that mutually exclusive foraging modes are used for those prey categories. -from Authors