Trophic niche of Pseudopaludicola boliviana (Anura: Leptodactylidae) from northern Brazil

In this work, we studied the diet of Pseudopaludicola boliviana from a floodplain area in southern Amapa, Brazil. A total of 141 frogs were collected by hand from March 2017 to March 2018, with 87 individuals collected during the rainy season (January-July) and 54 collected during the dry season (August-December). Of these, 86 stomachs (58 in the rainy season and 28 in the dry season) revealed 284 prey items. Acari (rainy season 35.56%, dry season 20.39%), Coleoptera (23.24%, 49.12%) and Diptera (20.42%, 20.53%) were the most abundant and important prey items. The most frequent items were Coleoptera (65.51%), Diptera (48.27%) and Hymenoptera (37.93%) for the males, and Diptera (57.14%), Acari (42.85%) and Coleoptera (39.28%) for the females. Frog morphometrics (snout-vent length, jaw width, and body weight) did not determine differences in dietary composition. The rarefaction curve did not reach the asymptote and indicated higher taxonomic richness in the diet of males, who also consumed a greater amount of prey than females. Niche breadth varied seasonally, with a wider niche breadth during the rainy season (Bsta = 0.453) compared to the dry season (Bsta = 0.238). The high trophic niche overlap (rainy season: Ojk = 0.866; dry season: Ojk = 0.708) between males and females in both seasons indicated similarity in diet during the entire year. During the entire year, P. boliviana consumed prey of similar volumetric size but seemed to consume more prey items during the rainy season. We conclude that P. boliviana has a generalist diet, marked by high dietary plasticity.