Trophic allometry in a predator that carries corpses of its prey

Ant-snatching assassin bugs carry a ‘backpack’ of ant corpses as an antipredator strategy. From photographs, we quantified the relative size and number of ants in these backpacks. We found a trade-off between size and number of carried ants, suggesting that trophic allometry has implications beyond energy acquisition, potentially affecting camouflage.