Kin cannibals: recently hatched Philoria pughi tadpoles consume unhatched siblings in isolated terrestrial nests
John Gould
A * , Stephen V. Mahony A and Michael Mahony A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Conservation Science Research Group, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia.
Australian Journal of Zoology 70(3) 83-86 https://doi.org/10.1071/ZO22038
Submitted: 12 August 2022 Accepted: 1 November 2022 Published: 9 December 2022
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Cannibalism is a behaviour exhibited across amphibian life history stages; however, there are few records that involve cannibalism between siblings. Here, we describe observations of recently hatched tadpoles of the frog Philoria pughi consuming sibling embryos with delayed or failed development. Our observations indicate that additional nutrition is obtained from the ingested embryos, despite tadpoles of species of Philoria being capable of endotrophic development. This discovery should be considered when establishing captive breeding colonies for Philoria species and needs further investigation in wild populations.
Keywords: Anura, asynchronous development, behaviour, captive management, diet, predation, siblicide, threatened species.
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