Tactical reproductive parasitism via larval cannibalism in Peruvian poison frogs

Abstract

We report an unusual example of reproductive parasitism in amphibians. Dendrobates variabi- lis, 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 fre- quently unrelated to embryos in the same pool. A pool choice experiment in the field demon- strated that males carrying tadpoles prefer to place them in pools with embryos, facilitating reproductive parasitism via cannibalism. Originally published Biology Letters, Vol. 5, No. 2, Apr 2009