KTB have a lot of information on stomach contents of toads and this is available on request. Their diet is obviously influenced by the area they are eating in. Toad busting on pastoral stations is where we find the most evidence of toads eating dung beetles. Toads follow the cattle pads from one Turkey nest to the other (usually a distance of about 10 km) use the dung to hydrate in and can be found sitting on top of dung at night eating the bugs that are attracted to the dung as well as consuming the dung beetle itself. The one observation we made a few years ago was that the lavender beetle appeared to make the toad sick and we quite often found a number of toads dead in the cages we were setting out. Autopsy of the toads revealed their stomach contents to be largely the lavender beetle.The lavender (stink) beetle was attracted to the lights in the cage and was the most dominant food source for the toads when caught in these cages. We stopped using cages some time ago but will start putting these back out and see if we can replicate what appeared to be happening.
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 10:17:39 +0000
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