Predation Or Competition: Which Is More Important To Evolution?
Biologists studying a population of lizards on the Bahamas say that competition among the brown anole lizard (Anolis sagrei) is more important than predation by birds and snakes when it comes to survival of the fittest lizard. The Dartmouth team's results, published in Nature, may also aid efforts to teach the public about evolution. For the study, researchers covered multiple small islands in the Bahamas with bird-proof netting to keep predatory birds at bay. Other islands were left open to bird predators, and on still other islands, the researchers added predatory snakes to expose the lizards to both bird and snake predators. Next, they tracked the lizards over the summer to record which lizards lived and which died on the different islands. read more