Hi Mark. A frog friend and I were at the lily pond today and it was rife with tadpoles of various sizes and stages. Two questions: 1) It looked like the two ducks might be feeding on them ... do they? 2) How many tadpoles actually survive to frog adulthood? — Christine C. This particular topic has come up a lot recently, and one of our visitors beautifully photographed a heron eating a rather large bullfrog out of the lily pond in the Children's Garden . It was a graphic interaction, but demonstrates how vital amphibians are in food webs and one of the reasons we use to illustrate how important it is to keep amphibians around. Almost everything eats them, or their tadpoles, or their eggs ... or all three. Many animals eat frogs exclusively (including some frog species!), and the herons at the Garden obviously love them. I have seen ducks eating tadpoles quite rapidly. In fact, my amphibian class last summer quantified how quickly different aquatic birds could consume ta
Excuse me, i've got a question about dendrobatidae : Is Dendrobates Pumilio the only species whose females carry tadpoles on their backs, or not ?
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Thanks, Ivan ... Dendrobates pumilio (now Oophaga pumilio) like most frogs in the dendrobatidae family transport their larvae to a suitable aquatic environment after hatching. Often times, it is the female but sometimes it can be the male. If I remember correctly, larvae can be transported by either in O. pumilio, but is most often it is the female ...
ReplyDeleteThanks for your question! I find parental care in frogs—and particularly Poison frogs— fascinating