ABOVE: Diving beetle eggs (circled in red) laid on frog spawn hatch within hours of the emergence of the tadpoles the beetle larvae feed on.
JOHN GOULD
The paper
J. Gould et al., “Diving beetle offspring oviposited in amphibian spawn prey on the tadpoles upon hatching,” Entomol Sci, 22:393–97, 2019.
While studying the conservation of endangered amphibians during his PhD at the University of Newcastle in Australia, Jose Valdez spent a lot of time peering into ponds looking for tadpoles. One night a few years ago, he noticed a group of predaceous diving beetles (family: Dytiscidae) ripping into a tadpole. Both larval and adult diving beetles are known predators of tadpoles, but witnessing the act himself, Valdez began to wonder about the influence of these invertebrates on amphibian survival. “These predators perhaps are overlooked,” he says.
When Valdez surveyed ponds in a half-acre area, he found that 80 percent of the ...
