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Anuran nightmare: the unbeatable killer carabid larvae

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We might get lost in the tiny details of an already restricted topic for years in everyday science, maneuvering ourselves into a position where only a handful of people share our view about what the ‘most interesting’ thing in biology/nature is. Luckily,  a new discovery of animal behaviour/adaptation can suddenly remind us where our interest in nature started (let’s forget now people who decided to become biologists as a career move as adults).

Frogs usually eat all sort of invertebrates (including carabid beetle larvae) all over the world. However, in a recent paper, Gil Wizen and Avital Gasith (Tel-Aviv University) report on the most surprising predator-prey role reversal: not only adults of the carabid genus Epomis can kill and consume frogs that are several times larger than themselves, but even their larvae feed exclusively on anurans. And in a creepy way. When the larvae sense that a frog is around, they start to move their antennae and mandibles to lure the poor frog closer, then they bite on the frog, and game over. The frog cannot remove the (way smaller) larva anymore, and get eaten alive.

So cool to see that shocking nature stories that seem like something Darwin discovered can be still found nowadays.

Details of the story can be found in:

Wizen G, Gasith A 2011. An unprecedented role reversal: ground beetle larvae (Coleoptera: Carabidae) lure amphibians and prey upon them. PLoS ONE 6(9): e25161. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025161

The videos attached to the paper are awesome. Check video S2 and S4 from the supplement material and imagine you are a naive frog thinking about a light breakfast!

An attacking frog got caught

... and eaten


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