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.
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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.