diappearing tadpoles

[rusty shackleford]

To my delight, my recently established wildlife pond attracted 4 clumps of frogspawn this spring. At first all seemed well and they were plenty of tadpoles. As time has passed they seem fewer and fewer and now I can only find a few furtive survivors. Last night I discovered as least three enormous Greater Diving Beetle larvae are also resident. Fantastic predators as these are, I love to see frogs and am keen to offer them refuge in my garden.

Would it be right to catch the larvae and move them to a nearby pool and give the frogs a chance to establish themselves. After all the larvae will die out if there are no tadpoles. I never knew establishing an ecosysten could be so stressful!

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by rusty shackleford

To my delight, my recently established wildlife pond attracted 4 clumps of frogspawn this spring. At first all seemed well and they were plenty of tadpoles. As time has passed they seem fewer and fewer and now I can only find a few furtive survivors. Last night I discovered as least three enormous Greater Diving Beetle larvae are also resident. Fantastic predators as these are, I love to see frogs and am keen to offer them refuge in my garden.

Would it be right to catch the larvae and move them to a nearby pool and give the frogs a chance to establish themselves. After all the larvae will die out if there are no tadpoles. I never knew establishing an ecosysten could be so stressful!

Nothing establishes an ecosystem better than time and nature itself , it will eventually be a balance of sorts, lots of things eat tadpoles - including other tadpoles - thats why frogs lay so many eggs, but its also true that particularly frog tadpoles with their brown colouring can be difficult to see so there may be more about than you realise. I'd be tempted to leave things be, that way the tadpoles that survive will be the strongest ones who are most effective at avoiding predators and these in turn will pass on the better survival genes to their offspring etc.......

In one of the ponds I am surveying at the moment there are lots of huge juicy fat tadpoles and also lots of great diving beetle larvae and greater water-boatmen both of which prey on tadpoles amongst other things and all are in good numbers so I'm not sure these invertebrate predators can cause that much trouble......