Abstract
Knowledge about the diet of anurans in different environments is essential to understanding important aspects of their trophic ecology. The bromeliad-frog Phyllodytes luteolus inhabits tank bromeliads in sandy coastal plains and lowland forests on the mainland, as well as a continental island in southeastern Brazil. In this work, we describe and analyze the diet of P. luteolus in three environments. We obtained the consumed prey items of 92 frogs (32 from sandy coastal plain, 32 from lowland forest and 28 from the island) via a stomach-flushing procedure. We found some variations in consumed prey composition and prey volume across populations, but ants represented the most important consumed prey in all environments. Only ants had a relative importance greater than 50%, which may suggest a specialized diet that transcends the sandy coastal plain environment.
Highlights
Amphibians generally prey on a wide variety of invertebrates (Lima et al, 2010; Cicort-Lucaciu et al, 2011; Solé & Rödder, 2010), vertebrates (Duellman & Lizana, 1994), and, less frequently, fruits (Silva & Britto-Pereira, 2006)
We evaluated the stomach contents of 92 individuals: 32 from sandy coastal plains, 32 from lowland forest and 28 from the island
The high importance of ants in the diet of P. luteolus was observed in other sandy coastal plains in Espírito Santo State (Ferreira et al, 2012; Motta-Tavares et al, 2016) and Bahia (Motta-Tavares et al, 2016; Solé & Loebmann, 2017)
Summary
Amphibians generally prey on a wide variety of invertebrates (Lima et al, 2010; Cicort-Lucaciu et al, 2011; Solé & Rödder, 2010), vertebrates (Duellman & Lizana, 1994), and, less frequently, fruits (Silva & Britto-Pereira, 2006). They are considered to be generalists in their diet. The bromeliad frog Phyllodytes luteolus (WiedNewied, 1824) is an endemic species from the Atlantic Forest on the eastern coast of Brazil (Frost, 2016).
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