[wiedemey]

The male had been carrying the tadpoles for a few days and ignoring the cups in his tank when I decided to catch him. Placed in a deli cup with water, the tadpoles refused to let go even though he was trying to wipe them off with his hind legs. I put him back in his tank and placed a few cups higher up in the tank (last picture) - one of the tadpoles was deposited almost immediately into the bigger cup. Unfortunately, I didn't witness the actual deposition. Is it known what triggers the controlled release of a single tadpole while the others are hanging on?

 

[sports_doc]

Best, IMO, to let the male do the work and not to catch and force a release.

They clearly rely upon water quality/ temp issues and seem to have 'favorite' spots to deposit.

They can hang onto tads for up to a week without issues that Ive seen.

Best,

 

[calebrez]

This may be a stupid question but are these egg feeders? After they deposit a tad into the brom or film cannister do they feed the tad?

 

[Julio]

They will feed the tads after they deposit them, however they are not obligate egg feeders so the tads can be raised artificially.

 

[wiedemey]

Thanks for the replies! In the scientific literature, I couldn't find any reports describing egg feeding in the fantastica group. I also talked to Jason Brown who studied Ranitomeya parental care as a grad student in Kyle Summers' lab. He mentioned that fantastica would seek out the larger phytotelmata to deposit the tadpoles (because they depend on mosquito larvae, debris, etc.) whereas imitator can use the smaller bromeliads because the tadpoles get supplemented with feeder eggs. In this case, I tried to pull the tadpoles because I didn't want my male to drop them into one of the bromeliads in the tank; IMO they are too small to sustain tadpole development (and I haven't had any tank-raised froglets).

Ruprecht

 

[Chris Miller]

This may be a stupid question but are these egg feeders? After they deposit a tad into the brom or film cannister do they feed the tad?

No, they do not. The tadpoles lack the egg begging behavior found in the vanzolinii group of frogs.

Thanks for the replies! In the scientific literature, I couldn't find any reports describing egg feeding in the fantastica group. I also talked to Jason Brown who studied Ranitomeya parental care as a grad student in Kyle Summers' lab. He mentioned that fantastica would seek out the larger phytotelmata to deposit the tadpoles (because they depend on mosquito larvae, debris, etc.) whereas imitator can use the smaller bromeliads because the tadpoles get supplemented with feeder eggs. In this case, I tried to pull the tadpoles because I didn't want my male to drop them into one of the bromeliads in the tank; IMO they are too small to sustain tadpole development (and I haven't had any tank-raised froglets).

Ruprecht

I heard the same thing from Evan, coupled with my own experiments, I don't believe there is any egg feeding going on in any part of the fantastica group.

I found they need ~110mL of water to be raised up reliably in viv. This is about in line with the findings on phytotelemata volume preference for varaibilis and a far cry from the 17mL that vanzolinii use on average.

 

[EricM]

The group I work with deposits most of the tads in the water bowl and not the film cansiters. Is this by chance or are they choosing the larger volume of water. There is no need for food eggs when siblings are delivered for dinner as well.

I am going to place a cup with more water than the film canister but less than the bowl and see what they do.

thx
eRic

 

[wiedemey]

Azureus male transporting. A day later, the female was carrying a tadpole, too.