Abstract
Closely related species are often similar in morphological and ecological characters, which maylead them to compete when occurring in sympatry. In this sense, we analyzed trophic nicheoverlap among three Leptodactylus species, Leptodactylus macrosternum, L. fuscus and L. aff.podicipinus, in a floodplain environment from a Protected area in the Brazilian Amazon. Inaddition, we applied Network and Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis. Wefound 18 prey categories, most of them belonging to Arthropoda (94.4%). Coleoptera, Isoptera,Diptera and Hymenoptera were the most abundant prey on the diet shared among the threespecies. The rarefaction curve of prey richness did not reach an asymptote, indicating that thediet composition may be higher by increase the sample. The species presented a broad nichebreadth, however, no relationship between jaw width and prey size were found in the studiedspecies. Despite the line-up in NMDS with Bray Curtis Index indicated that the species’ diets aresimilar with few different attributes, with some food items overlapping among species (Stress=0.00201), the niche overlap between the pair of species was not high (Ojk < 0.7). Therefore, webelieve interactions such as competition would be better demonstrated addressing data on preyavailability and microhabitat use patterns.
Published Version
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