Diet and prey composition of Leptodactylus mystaceus from an open area in the Guiana Shield region

In this study we describe the diet of the leptodactylid Leptodactylus mystaceus during the rainy season from an open area in the Cancão Natural Municipal Park, municipality of Serra do Navio, a lowland area of the Guiana Shield. Frogs were captured by hand monthly from February to July 2019. We examined 40 individuals of L. mystaceus, that were measured and treated with a stomach-flushing method. Three categories of arthropods dominated the diet: Araneae (spiders), Coleoptera (beetles), and Orthoptera (grasshoppers). The most important item in the diet was coleopterans and the niche breadth was narrow. The correlation between the volume of consumed prey and snout-vent length, jaw width, and body mass was not significant. Of the prey items according to hardness and mobility, we found that hard and intermediate prey were more common, respectively. Our results show that L. mystaceus shared characteristics with the generalist behavior of typical “sit-and-wait” foragers and “non-ant specialist predators”.