Vampire Beatles

Strictly speaking, these are not beetles, though they resemble them with their rounded bodies and hard exoskeletons. Vampire beatles are actually a type of insect similiar to mosquitoes. They are, however, far stronger. Capable of burrowing through fur and peircing all but the thickest hides, these insects, like mosquitos, feed by drinking the blood of larger animals. However, unlike them, vampire beatles always attack in gigsntic swarms, and can drain even the largest of the swamp's inhabitants to death quickly. They are nearly indiscriminate in what they eat, refraining only from eating flying frogs, who are in turn their only predators. During the colder half of the year, they are not to be found above ground. Their population increases drastically when the weather warms as the eggs laid in the mud the season before all hatch within a few days of each other.

The effect that the loss of Vampire Beatles would have on an ecosystem is difficult to predict. As they eat almost every animal indiscriminately, no one single population would explode disproportianately. However, flying frogs, deprived of their only food source, would quickly starve. The Beatles' extinction would probably be disasterous for the ecosystem, but it is unlear which species, no longer held in check by them, would overrun the rest.