Introduction Trophic interactions are a crucial component of life history strategies and contribute to the population regulation (Duellman and Trueb, 1994; Wells, 2007). In the Neotropics, habitat loss is still the primary threat to amphibian populations (Young et al., 2001; Stuart et al., 2004). Other indirect effects associated to landscape fragmentation may cause alteration of trophic interactions, due to changes in microclimate, causing abundance variations in available prey items, what might contribute to the decline of amphibians (Carey et al., 2001; Young et al., 2001). A profound knowledge about trophic relationships in tropical communities is essential for the development of successful conservation strategies. An assessment of possible shifts in trophic niches of species inhabiting natural and human altered habitats is currently lacking for the vast majority of anuran taxa. The family Leptodactylidae is distributed from the extreme southern USA throughout tropical Mexico, Central America and South America (Frost et al., 2006), whereby the genus Leptodactylus currently comprises 76 species mainly distributed in South America (Frost, 2008). Compared to other members of the genus, Leptodactylus ocellatus (Fig. 1) is a large nocturnal frog, which is widely distributed throughout South America east of the Andes (Cei, 1980). The species inhabits all varieties of ponds, rivers and even lakes and can often be found in strongly anthropogenized areas. Heyer, Caramaschi and de Sá (2006) recently designated a neotype for this species and stated that there are both reproductive and molecular differences that suggest the presence of more than one species under the name L. ocellatus. Regarding L. ocellatus, previous studies have mainly dealt with growth, reproductive (Vaz-Ferreira and Gehrau, 1975), behavioral aspects (Strüssmann et al., 1984), food habits of tadpoles (Lajmanovich, 1994) and juveniles (Lajmanovich, 1996). The diet of L. ocellatus has been studied in several Neotropical countries (Strüssmann et al., 1984; Teixeira and Vrcibradic, 2003; França, Facure and Giaretta, 2004; Maneyro et al., 2004; Sanabria, Quiroga and Acosta, 2005) and in several populations the species has been found to be a potential predator of amphibians (Teixeira and Vrcibradic, 2003; França, Facure and Giaretta, 2004; Sanabria, Quiroga and Acosta, 2005). Our study provides data on the diet of L. ocellatus from a cacao plantation in southern Bahia. We report some prey categories that have not been previously identiied as part of the frog’s diet and we discuss our data with Herpetology Notes, volume 2: 9-15 (2009) (published online on 16 February 2009) Diet of Leptodactylus ocellatus (Anura: Leptodactylidae) from a cacao plantation in southern Bahia, Brazil Mirco Solé 1 *, Iuri R. Dias 1 , Erika A. S. Rodrigues 1 , Euvaldo Marciano-Jr 1 , Samuel M. J. Branco 1 , Kaoli P. Cavalcante 1 and Dennis Rödder 2,3 1 Department of Biological Sciences, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Rodovia Ilhéus-Itabuna, km 16, 45662-000 Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil; e-mail: mksole@uesc.br 2 Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Department of Herpetology, Adenauerallee 160, 53113 Bonn, Germany 3 Trier University, Department of Biogeography, 54286 Trier, Germany * corresponding author Abstract. We studied the diet of Leptodactylus ocellatus in a cacao plantation in southern Bahia state, Brazil and compared our results with data available from populations inhabiting natural and human modiied habitats. Stomachs of 117 specimens were lushed whereby 77 stomachs revealed at least one prey item. Our results indicate that L. ocellatus consumes a great variety of food items at the study site, whereby Lepidoptera larvae, Coleoptera and Araneae dominated its diet. The presence of vertebrates including Teleostei and Anura in the diet revealed in previous studies was conirmed, although these items made up only minor parts of the diet. The index of relative importance showed that the diet of L. ocellatus was dominated by Lepidoptera larvae, followed by Coleoptera and Araneae. The Levins index observed in our samples was 8.51 and the standardized Shannon-Weaver index was 0.56. Apparently, the structure of the trophic niche of L. ocellatus is not affected by habitat alteration. The present study provides evidence for the opportunistic feeding behaviour and broad trophic niche breadth of L. ocellatus. Keywords. Amphibia, diet, trophic niche, cacao plantation, predation.