Some salamanders take great risks in order to grow more quickly, racing to become too large for predators to eat, a new study reports.
Rather than play it safe by hiding from predators, young spotted salamanders risk their lives by foraging most actively where the risk of predation is highest.
The behavior runs counter to common expectations of predator-prey relationships.
Prey species are generally thought to be more cautious foragers when predation risk is high, even if this means obtaining less food and growing more slowly.
But for young spotted salamanders, safety lies in size rather than concealment, said study author Mark Urban, of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California.
That's because the species' main predator, the marbled salamander, is limited in the size of prey it can swallow.
By living dangerously during their first weeks of life, the spotted salamanders take less time to grow larger than bite-size.
"It becomes a race to grow big enough before being eaten," Urban said. "Even if the initial predation risks are high, the rewards of rapid growth may more than make up for it."
His study appears in today's edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Defying Expectation
In the study, conducted on larvae found in Connecticut ponds, not all spotted salamanders turned out to be risk-takers.
Urban found that foraging activity varied greatly from pond to pond.
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