Brown Jason L, Morales Victor, Summers Kyle
Department of Biology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA.
Biol Lett. 2009 Apr 23;5(2):148-51. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0591. Epub 2008 Nov 28.
We report an unusual example of reproductive parasitism in amphibians. Dendrobates variabilis, an Amazonian poison frog, oviposits at the surface of the water in small pools in plants and deposits tadpoles within the pools. Tadpoles are highly cannibalistic and consume young tadpoles if they are accessible. Deposition of embryos and tadpoles in the same pool is common. Genetic analyses indicate that tadpoles are frequently unrelated to embryos in the same pool. A pool choice experiment in the field demonstrated that males carrying tadpoles prefer to place them in pools with embryos, facilitating reproductive parasitism via cannibalism.
我们报告了两栖动物中一种不寻常的繁殖寄生现象。亚马逊箭毒蛙——变色丛蛙，在植物中小水潭的水面产卵，并将蝌蚪产在水潭内。蝌蚪具有很强的同类相食习性，如果能够接触到，就会吃掉幼蝌蚪。在同一水潭中产卵和产蝌蚪的情况很常见。基因分析表明，同一水潭中的蝌蚪往往与胚胎没有亲缘关系。一项野外水池选择实验表明，携带蝌蚪的雄性青蛙更喜欢将蝌蚪放置在有胚胎的水潭中，通过同类相食促进繁殖寄生。
