By Susan Milius
After more than 30 years of research, scientists have found a source from which poison frogs can acquire a major group of chemical weapons. In a survey of possible frog foods in Panama, the toxins turned up in formicine ants, the subfamily that includes wood ants and carpenter ants.
Researchers have found dietary sources for some other types of frog toxins, but the ant analysis marks the first potential supply of a widespread and large family of alkaloids called pumiliotoxins, says John Daly of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md. Until Daly’s frog-diet surveys, the only known natural pumiliotoxins came from frog skin, Daly and his colleagues explain in the May 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.