Abstract
Although common, confamilial naticid predation intensity was not very high in the geological record. Here, we gathered modern confamilial predation data from the Indian coasts and showed that confamilial naticid predation on a naticid species, Natica gualteriana, is exceptionally high at Chandipur, one of our studied areas. We studied the different aspects of confamilial predation from the Indian coasts and showed that the predators in Chandipur were highly efficient as evident from high drilling frequency (DF), site stereotypy and low prey effectiveness. Unusually high DF on N. gualteriana may be attributed to its new arrival in Chandipur where it faced competitive elimination through predation by sympatric naticid predators. Reports of failed invasion are rare. Natica gualteriana is a small invader and therefore its invasion success is threatened by resident populations of large species that extensively drill on young individuals of N. gualteriana just to break the bottleneck of their own offspring from competition.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Director, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, for granting access to the archived samples. Two reviewers, Patricia Kelley and Greg Dietl, critically read the manuscript and provided valuable suggestions. We also thank Rakhi Dutta and Sumanta Mallick (Jadavpur University) for their support in preparing the manuscript. We sincerely thank G. Paul and D. Sarkar for help in the field.