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. 2009 Apr 23;5(2):148-51.
doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0591. Epub 2008 Nov 28.

Tactical reproductive parasitism via larval cannibalism in Peruvian poison frogs

Jason L Brown  1 , Victor Morales, Kyle Summers
Affiliations

Tactical reproductive parasitism via larval cannibalism in Peruvian poison frogs

Jason L Brown et al. Biol Lett. .

Abstract

We report an unusual example of reproductive parasitism in amphibians. Dendrobates variabilis, an Amazonian poison frog, oviposits at the surface of the water in small pools in plants and deposits tadpoles within the pools. Tadpoles are highly cannibalistic and consume young tadpoles if they are accessible. Deposition of embryos and tadpoles in the same pool is common. Genetic analyses indicate that tadpoles are frequently unrelated to embryos in the same pool. A pool choice experiment in the field demonstrated that males carrying tadpoles prefer to place them in pools with embryos, facilitating reproductive parasitism via cannibalism.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Photo illustration of breeding strategies in D. variabilis: a male transporting tadpoles, a tadpole and two embryos in a bromeliad tank.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) The survivorship of embryos or tadpoles after one week of being housed with a larger tadpole. (b) The results of the pool choice experiment (pools with and without clutches of embryos). (c) Distribution of relatedness estimates for 19 pairwise comparisons between tadpoles and embryos collected simultaneously from the same pool.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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