These frogs mainly eat ants and other small insects that come to the bromeliad. They reproduce in the bromeliad, and their tadpoles develop in the water-filled pools, feeding off algae, mosquito larvae, or other small organisms in the water. Two kinds of bromeliad frogs are marsupial frogs and the colorful poison arrow frogs.
Some marsupial frogs carry their eggs and developing tadpoles under a skin flap on their back.
When the female enters the water in the bromeliad pool, the tadpoles are released into the water and continue their development there. Poison arrow frogs. The parents guard the eggs until they hatch, then carry the tadpoles on their backs, one at a time, high up into the canopy to a bromeliad pool. Only one tadpole is placed in each bromeliad pool, a behavior that scatters the tadpoles and reduces competition for limited food in the small pool. Predatory damselfly larvae also developing in the bromeliad pools are major predators of bromeliad frog tadpoles.