Tadpole Taxi

Poison frog parents provide excellent care to their tadpole offspring. Parent frogs, like the one pictured here, carry newly hatched tadpoles on their backs through the rainforest and place them into small pools of water that form in the crevices of plants. Parent frogs then return every so often to lay unfertilized eggs in the water for the tadpoles to eat. When parents visit, the tadpole will quickly vibrate its entire body in the water. This vibrational behavior is thought to be a form of begging, like how baby birds beg for food from their parents. In the mimic poison frog (Ranitomeya imitator), parents raise multiple tadpoles simultaneously and are often choosy about which of their tadpoles they want to feed. My research looks at how begging influences which tadpole parents decide to feed by examining how long and how fast tadpoles vibrate in hopes of receiving a meal.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/ior2024/1003/thumbnail.jp