Egg predation

Egg predation is found widely across the animal kingdom, including in fish, birds, snakes, mammals, and arthropods.

Humans have accidentally or intentionally introduced egg predators such as rats to places that had been free of them, causing damage to native species such as ground-nesting seabirds.

[4] Generalist predators can have a substantial effect on ground-nesting birds such as the European golden plover, Pluvialis apricaria: in Norway 78.2% of nests of this species were preyed on.

Experimental removal of two nest and egg predators, red fox and carrion crow, raised the percentage of pairs that fledged young from c. 18% to c. 75%.

Population increases among many generalist predators such as buzzard, badger, carrion crow, pine marten, raven, and red fox in Scotland have contributed to the decline in several ground-nesting bird species by taking eggs, young, and sitting hen (female) birds.

Within the 21st century, little ravens have learnt to depredate little penguin burrows to access the eggs on Phillip Island off southeastern Australia.

[10][11] The marbled sea snake also has a deletion mutation in its three-finger toxin gene, reducing its venom toxicity by between 50- and 100-fold.

It may be an obligate egg-feeder, as it has not been seen feeding on an adult, but has been found in the nests of a variety of species of North American freshwater fish of the genera Campostoma and Moxostoma.

[22][23][24][25] Sauropod dinosaurs, some of the largest animals that have ever lived, appear surprisingly to have followed an r-selected reproductive strategy, producing a large number of hard-shelled eggs.

Whales produce few eggs which develop internally, receiving a high level of parental investment.

Offshore island populations in Australasia have been widely affected by exotic species such as rats, arriving by ship from Eurasia.

Native species, such as blotched blue-tongue lizards, Tiliqua nigrolutea, and water-rats, Hydromys chrysogaster, may also have an impact on seabirds like the short-tailed shearwater, Ardenna tenuirostris on islands off Tasmania, though predation rates were relatively low.

In the case of bird predators, one approach has been to put out bait eggs treated with the slow-acting avicide DRC-1339.

A red-bellied black snake Pseudechis porphyriacus eating eggs of the green tree snake Dendrelaphis punctulatus
Generalist and omnivorous [ 5 ] predators like this fish crow, Corvus ossifragus , eat eggs among many other prey when they have the opportunity.
Egyptian vulture using a stone to break an egg too large to pick up
The long-tailed skink, Eutropis longicaudata , actively defends its nest against snakes. [ 15 ]
Little ringed plover at its nest; the eggs are camouflaged like the pebbles among which they are laid.
Diagram of the fossil snake Sanajeh as found, coiled with sauropod eggs and nestlings
3rd instar larva of Harmonia axyridis eating an egg of another ladybird species (probably Adalia )