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26 results for “predation on amphibians”
Exposure to sublethal concentrations of a pesticide or predator cues induces changes in brain architecture in larval amphibians, 2013.
Naturally occurring environmental factors shape developmental trajectories to produce variable phenotypes. Such developmental phenotypic plasticity can have important effects on fitness, and has been demonstrated for numerous behavioral and morphological traits. However, surprisingly few studies have examined developmental plasticity of the nervous system in response to naturally occurring environmental variation, despite accumulating evidence for neuroplasticity in a variety of organisms. Here, we asked whether the brain is developmentally plastic by exposing larval amphibians to natural and anthropogenic factors. Leopard frog tadpoles were exposed to predator cues, reduced food availability, or sublethal concentrations of the pesticide chlorpyrifos in semi-natural enclosures. Mass, growth, survival, activity, larval period, external morphology, brain mass, and brain morphology were measured in tadpoles and after metamorphosis. Tadpoles in the experimental treatments had lower masses than controls, although developmental rates and survival were similar. Tadpoles exposed to predator cues or a high dose of chlorpyrifos had altered body shapes compared to controls. In addition, brains from tadpoles exposed to predator cues or a low dose of chlorpyrifos were narrower and shorter in several dimensions compared to control tadpoles and tadpoles with low food availability. Interestingly, the changes in brain morphology present at the tadpole stage did not persist in the metamorphs. Our results show that brain morphology is a developmentally plastic trait that is responsive to ecologically relevant natural and anthropogenic factors. Whether these effects on brain morphology are linked to performance or fitness is unknown.
Sublethal effects of pesticides on predator-prey interactions in amphibians, 2008.
Increasing evidence suggests that contaminants in the environment can have important consequences on organismal interactions. While we have a good understanding of the lethal effects of contaminants on organisms, we have a weak understanding of how contaminants can affect organisms by altering the interactions that they have with other species in the community. Using tadpoles of two anuran species (Bullfrogs, Lithobates [Rana] catesbeianus; Green Frogs, L. clamitans), we investigated the effects of low nominal concentrations (1 and 10 ppb) of two pesticides (malathion and endosulfan) on tadpole activity and survival when exposed to four predator treatments (no predators; water bugs, Belostoma flumineum; newts, Notophthalmus viridescens; and dragonfly larvae, Anax junius). In both anuran species, adding predators reduced tadpole activity and survival, with increasing rates of mortality occurring with water bugs, newts, and dragonflies, respectively. Additionally, the highest concentration of endosulfan caused tadpole mortality after 48 hrs. Most significant, tadpole species also experienced interactive effects of predators and pesticides on survival after 48 hrs. In Bullfrog treatments, all predators reduced the amount of tadpole mortality when exposed to endosulfan. In Green Frogs, additive negative effects occurred, except that newts increased the tadpole mortality when exposed to endosulfan. Our findings illustrate that pesticide effects on predator–prey interactions are often complex and have the potential to alter aquatic community composition.
New effects of Roundup on amphibians: Predators reduce herbicide mortality while herbicides induce anti-predator morphology, 2006.
The use of pesticides is important for growing crops and protecting human health by reducing the prevalence of targeted pest species. However, less attention is given to the potential unintended effects on nontarget species, including taxonomic groups that are of current conservation concern. One issue raised in recent years is the potential for pesticides to become more lethal in the presence of predatory cues, a phenomenon observed thus far only in the laboratory. A second issue is whether pesticides can induce unintended trait changes in nontarget species, particularly trait changes that might mimic adaptive responses to natural environmental stressors. Using outdoor mesocosms, I created simple wetland communities containing leaf litter, algae, zooplankton, and three species of tadpoles (wood frogs [Rana sylvatica or Lithobates sylvaticus], leopard frogs [R. pipiens or L. pipiens], and American toads [Bufo americanus or Anaxyrus americanus]). I exposed the communities to a factorial combination of environmentally relevant herbicide concentrations (0, 1, 2, or 3 mg acid equivalents [a.e.]/L of Roundup Original MAX) crossed with three predator-cue treatments (no predators, adult newts [Notophthalmus viridescens], or larval dragonflies [Anax junius]). Without predator cues, mortality rates from Roundup were consistent with past studies. Combined with cues from the most risky predator (i.e., dragonflies), Roundup became less lethal (in direct contrast to past laboratory studies). This reduction in mortality was likely caused by the herbicide stratifying in the water column and predator cues scaring the tadpoles down to the benthos where herbicide concentrations were lower. Even more striking was the discovery that Roundup induced morphological changes in the tadpoles. In wood frog and leopard frog tadpoles, Roundup induced relatively deeper tails in the same direction and of the same magnitude as the adaptive changes induced by dragonfly cues. To my knowledge, this i
Predator cues and pesticides: A double dose of danger for amphibians.
Amphibians are declining globally, and biologists have struggled to identify the causes. Pesticides may play a role in these declines, but pesticide concentrations in nature often are low and considered sublethal. Past research has found that the globally common pesticide carbaryl can become more lethal under different environmental conditions including differences in temperature and competition. A recent study has found that predatory stress, a situation common for most amphibians, can make carbaryl 2–4 times more deadly to gray tree frogs (Hyla versicolor). To determine whether this is a general phenomenon in amphibians, I examined how carbaryl affected the survival of six amphibian species in the presence and absence of predatory stress. Higher concentrations of carbaryl caused higher mortality. In two of the six species, carbaryl became even more lethal when combined with predatory stress (up to 46 times more lethal). This suggests that apparently safe concentrations of carbaryl (and perhaps other pesticides with similar modes of action) can become more deadly to some amphibian species when combined with predator cues.
Figure 2 in Amphibians and reptiles as prey of Heteroctenus junceus (Scorpiones: Buthidae), with a summary of vertebrate predation by scorpions in the West Indies
Figure 2. Heteroctenus junceus, the largest species in the genus and one of the largest scorpions in the West Indies, male (2a) and female (2b).
Figure 1 in Amphibians and reptiles as prey of Heteroctenus junceus (Scorpiones: Buthidae), with a summary of vertebrate predation by scorpions in the West Indies
Figure 1. Partially digested Anolis ophiolepis found being preyed upon by an adult female Heteroctenus junceus at Loma La Carrera; the scorpion fled as soon as we turned the rock over.
Figure 3 in Amphibians and reptiles as prey of Heteroctenus junceus (Scorpiones: Buthidae), with a summary of vertebrate predation by scorpions in the West Indies
Figure 3. Live individuals of the species of amphibians and reptiles reported here as being preyed upon by Heteroctenus junceus: Osteopilus septentrionalis (3a), Anolis allisoni (3b), A. sagrei (3c), and A. ophiolepis (3d).
Can predators stabilize host-parasite interactions? Changes in aquatic predator identity alters amphibian responses and parasite abundance across life stages
<p><span><span>The role of parasites can change depending on the food web community. Predators, for instance, can amplify or dilute parasite </span><span>effects on their hosts. Likewise, exposure to parasites or predators at one life stage can have long-term consequences on individual performance and survival, which can influence population and disease dynamics. To understand how predators affect amphibian parasite infections across life stages, we manipulated exposure of northern leopard frog (<em>Rana pipiens</em>) tadpoles to three predators (crayfish [<em>Orconectes rusticus</em>], bluegill [<em>Lepomis macrochirus</em>], or mosquitofish [<em>Gambusia affinis</em>]) and to trematode parasites (<em>Echinostoma</em> spp.) in mesocosms and followed juveniles in outdoor terrestrial enclosures through overwintering. Parasites and predators both had strong impacts on metamorphosis with bluegill and parasites individually reducing metamorph survival. However, when fish were present, the negative effects of parasites on survival were not apparent, likely because fish altered community composition via increased algal food resources. Bluegill also reduced snail abundance, which could explain the reduced abundance of parasites in surviving metamorphs. Bluegill and parasite exposure increased mass at metamorphosis, which increased metamorph jumping, swimming, and feeding performance, suggesting larger frogs would experience better terrestrial survival. Effects on size at metamorphosis persisted in the terrestrial environment but did not influence overwintering survival. Based on our results, we constructed stage-structured population models to evaluate the lethal and sublethal effects of bluegill and parasites on population dynamics. Our models suggested that the positive effects of bluegill and parasites on body size may have greater effects on population growth than the direct effects of mortality.</span> <span>This study illustrates how predators can alter the outcome of parasitic infections and highlights the need for long-term experiments that investigate how changes in host-parasite systems alter population dynamics. We show some predators reduce parasite effects and have indirect positive effects on surviving individuals potentially increasing host population persistence. </span></span></p>
Can predators stabilize host-parasite interactions? Changes in aquatic predator identity alters amphibian responses and parasite abundance across life stages
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Data from: Evidence for the Predator Attraction Hypothesis in an amphibian predator-prey system
<p>Many species possess damage-released chemical alarm cues that function in alerting nearby individuals to a predator attack. One hypothesis for the evolution and/or maintenance of such cues is the Predator Attraction Hypothesis, where predators, rather than prey, are the 'intended' recipients of these cues. If a predator attack attracts additional predators, these secondary predators might interfere with the predation event, providing the prey with a better chance to escape. In this study, we conducted two experiments to explore this hypothesis in an amphibian predator/prey system. In Experiment 1, we found that tiger salamanders (<em>Ambystoma</em> <em>mavortium</em>) showed a foraging attraction to chemical cues from wood frog (<em>Lithobates</em> <em>sylvaticus</em>) tadpoles. Salamanders that were experienced with tadpole prey, in particular, were strongly attracted to tadpole alarm cues. In Experiment 2, we observed experimental encounters between a tadpole and either one or two salamanders. The presence of the second predator caused salamanders to increase attack speed at the cost of decreased attack accuracy (i.e., increasing the probability that the tadpole would escape attacks). We also found that the mere presence of visual and chemical cues from a second predator did not affect this speed/accuracy trade-off but did cause enough of a distraction to increase tadpole survival. Thus, our findings are thus consistent with the Predator Attraction Hypothesis for the evolution and/or maintenance of alarm cues.</p>
Data from: Evidence for the Predator Attraction Hypothesis in an amphibian predator-prey system
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Data from: Interacting effects of predation risk and resource level on escape speed of amphibian larvae along a latitudinal gradient
Fast-growing genotypes living in time-constrained environments are often more prone to predation, suggesting that growth-predation risk trade-offs are important factors maintaining variation in growth along climatic gradients. However, the mechanisms underlying how fast growth increases predation-mediated mortality are not well understood. Here, we investigated if slow-growing, low-latitude individuals have faster escape swimming speed than fast-growing high-latitude individuals using common frog (Rana temporaria) tadpoles from eight populations collected along a 1500 km latitudinal gradient. We measured escape speed in terms of burst and endurance speeds in tadpoles raised in the laboratory at two food levels and in the presence and absence of a predator (Aeshna dragonfly larvae). We did not find any latitudinal trend in escape speed performance. In low food treatments, burst speed was higher in tadpoles reared with predators but did not differ between high food treatments. Endurance speed, on the contrary, was lower in high-food tadpoles reared with predators, and did not differ between treatments at low food levels. Tadpoles reared with predators showed inducible morphology (increased relative body size and tail depth), which had positive effects on speed endurance at low but not at high food levels. Burst speed was positively affected by tail length and tail muscle size in the absence of predators. Our results suggest that escape speed does not trade off with fast growth along the latitudinal gradient in R. temporaria tadpoles. Instead, escape speed is a plastic trait and strongly influenced by the interaction between resource level and predation risk.
Visual recognition and coevolutionary history drive responses of amphibians to an invasive predator
<p><span>During biotic invasions, native prey are abruptly exposed to novel predators and are faced with unprecedented predatory pressures. Under these circumstances, the lack of common evolutionary history may hamper predator recognition by native prey, undermining the expression of effective anti-predatory responses. Nonetheless, mechanisms allowing prey to overcome evolutionary naïveté exist. For instance, in naïve prey, history of coevolution with similar native predators or recognition of general traits characterizing predators can favor recognition of stimuli released by invasive predators. However, few studies assessed how these mechanisms shape prey response at the community level. Here, we evaluated behavioral responses in naïve larvae of 13 amphibian species to chemical and visual cues associated with an invasive predator, the American red swamp crayfish (<em>Procambarus clarkii</em>). Moreover, we investigated how variation among species responses was related to their coexistence with a similar native crayfish predator. Amphibian larvae altered their behavior in presence of visual stimuli of the alien crayfish, while chemical cues elicited feeble and contrasting behavioral shifts. Activity reduction was the most common and stronger response, whereas in some species we detected more heterogeneous strategies also involving distancing and rapid escape response. Interestingly, species sharing coevolutionary history with the native crayfish were able to finely tune their response to the invasive one, performing bursts to escape. These results suggest native prey can respond to invasive predators through recognition of generic risk cues (e.g., approaching large shapes), still the capability of modulating anti-predator strategies may also depend on their coevolutionary history with similar native predators. </span></p>
Data from: Invasion of Hawaiian rainforests by an introduced amphibian predator and N2-fixing tree increases soil N2O emissions
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Visual recognition and coevolutionary history drive responses of amphibians to an invasive predator
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Data from: Interacting effects of predation risk and resource level on escape speed of amphibian larvae along a latitudinal gradient
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Data from: Determinants and co-expression of anti-predator responses in amphibian tadpoles: a meta-analysis
A wide range of taxa respond to perceived predation risk (PPR) through inducible defenses, and many prey are capable of responding both behaviorally and morphologically to the same risk event. In cases where multiple defenses confer protection by independent means (i.e., they are mechanistically independent) responses will either be co-expressed, or the expression of one defense will limit the capacity (or need) to respond along another axis. Our ability to generate a broad understanding of these patters has been limited, in part, by difficulties in comparing results across studies that employ distinct experimental protocols. Using the extensive literature on tadpole responses to PPR, we conducted a meta-analysis to identify the ecological and experimental determinants of inducible defence expression. We then assessed whether the magnitude of response to PPR along behavioural versus morphological response axes was positively, or negatively, correlated. The most commonly quantified responses to perceived risk in tadpoles included reductions in movement and swimming behaviour, and altered tail morphology. Our analyses reveal that tadpole behavioural responses are strongly influenced by prey family, predator taxon, evolutionary history with the predator (native vs. non-native), amount of prey consumed by the predator, and how perceived risk was manipulated (e.g., presence vs. absence of alarm cues). Tail morphology was similarly influenced by these factors, but also whether the target prey was palatable to predators. Thus, our results identify ecological and experimental features that critically influence the observed effect size in tadpole responses to PPR. A positive correlation between behavioural and morphological responses in studies where both were measured indicates that trait co-specialization is the predominant pattern of defense deployment in larval amphibians. This positive relationship suggests that survival tends to be maximized in tadpoles through equivalent coactivation of multiple independent axes of protection, opposed to maximal expression along any single axis.
Data for: Food Web Structure Significantly Affects the Body Condition and Survival of an Amphibian Intraguild Predator
<p>Data for upcoming publication</p>
Data from: Egg-laying environment modulates offspring responses to predation risk in an amphibian
Predator-induced plasticity has been in the focus of evolutionary ecological research in the last decades, but the consequences of temporal variation in the presence of cues predicting offspring environment have remained controversial. This is partly due to the fact that the role of early environmental effects has scarcely been scrutinized in this context while also controlling for potential maternal effects. In this study we investigated how past environmental conditions, i.e. different combinations of risky or safe adult (pre-natal) and oviposition (early post-natal) environments affected offspring's plastic responses in hatching time and locomotor activity to predation risk during development in the smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris). We found that females did not adjust their reproductive investment to the perceived level of risk in the adult environment, and this pre-natal environment had generally negligible effect on offspring phenotype. However, when predator cues were absent during oviposition, larvae raised in the presence of predator cues delayed their hatching and exhibited a decreased activity compared to control larvae developing without predator cues, which responses are advantageous when predators pose a threat to hatched larvae. In the presence of predator cues during oviposition, the difference in hatching time persisted,but the difference in general locomotor activity disappeared between risk-exposed and control larvae. Our findings provide clear experimental evidence that fine-scale temporal variation in a predictive cue during and after egg-laying interactively affect offspring phenotype, and highlight the importance of the early post-natal environment, which may exert a substantial influence on progeny's phenotype also under natural conditions.
Figure 1 from: Wizen G, Gasith A (2011) Predation of amphibians by carabid beetles of the genus Epomis found in the central coastal plain of Israel. ZooKeys 100: 181-191. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.100.1526
Figure 1 - Distribution of Epomis species in the study area, central coastal plain, Israel, 2007–2009 (square in left corner shows location of study area).
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