The comparative diet of three Saharan sand dune skinks

Abstract

We compared the diets of the only three sand dune skinks of North Sinai, Chalcides ocellatus, Scincus scincus, and Sphenops sepsoides. Despite our small sample size, we found several interesting trends. Coleoptera was the most common prey order eaten by the skinks, occurring in about 90% of the stomachs for each species of lizard. The other prey orders occurred with far lower frequencies. Vegetation and seeds occurred in over half of the stomachs of the diurnal, S. scincus and C. ocellatus. The high occurrence of plant materials in the stomachs of S. scincus and C. ocellatus suggest that these items were intentionally consumed. Vegetation and seeds occurred at a far lower frequency in the nocturnal S. sepsoides, which fits the general pattern of low vegetation consumption by nocturnal and subterranean lizards. An interesting find of this study was an Acanthodactylus longipes in a S. scincus stomach ‐ to our knowledge, this is the first such record. The occurrence of the lizard A. longipes, and high rate of vegetation and insect consumption by S. scincus could suggest that diurnal, sand dune lizards are opportunistic feeders and dietary generalists. Future studies should examine in more detail the degree of dietary generalization or specialization in sand dune lizards.