Abstract Knowing about species interactions is essential for ecological research, conservation efforts, resource management, and maintaining healthy ecosystems, but many of these, such as reports of predation, may not always be published in easily located resources—if they are published at all. Finding and collating such information is challenging, given the wide range of often poorly indexed outlets and social media where these are available. We performed an in‐depth literature review of predation data on Iguana iguana (Linnaeus, 1758) and compared our results with two recently published reviews. We identified 158 reported incidences of I. iguana predation from 35 different journals, ten books, and a conference presentation, a total of 91 different sources, compared with 66 and 69 incidences reported in the earlier overviews. We confirmed a total of 108 unique predator species of I. iguana , of which 102 had been reported prior to the 2023 reviews. The earlier reviews retrieved only 56 (54.9%) and 59 (57.8%) predator species, respectively. While the results of our survey increase the number of species known to prey on I. iguana , they also highlight that conducting comprehensive reviews of species interactions is challenging, and that the most commonly used outlets, such as Google Scholar, Herpetological Review , and Herpetology Notes , provide access to a narrower range of observations than those actually available with additional searching. Especially, reports lacking the scientific name of I. iguana were less likely to be identified, indicating the importance of using binomina in titles. We urge compilers of ecology‐ or morphology‐themed reviews (e.g., species as predator or prey, behavioral observations, diseases and parasites, phenotypic aberrations) to use an extra dose of due diligence when assembling their materials and to consult sources well beyond the commonly used outlets.
Burg et al. (Wed,) studied this question.