Meeting Abstract
Many species, though phylogenetically very similar, have radically different behaviors. Evaluating these behavioral differences is key to understanding how species’ behavior can change to adapt to their environment. However, comparing behavior across species can be difficult in the wild due to uncontrollable factors in the field and ecological variation between species. Thus, a need arises to develop standardized assays in the lab to measure specific components of behavior. Closely related South American poison frogs differ radically in their ecology and behavior. We chose to use the open field test as our selected behavioral assay, as it is a standard method of assessing an animal’s activity level, boldness, and exploratory behavior, but it has yet to be tested in poison frogs. We tested the viability of the open field test to explore variations between poison frog tadpoles of three species:Ranitomeya imitator, Ranitomeya variabilis, and Dendrobates tinctorius. We found that individual tadpoles varied in their behavior in an open field, and that tadpole activity also varied across species: R. imitator traveled more, at higher average speeds, and explored more of the arena than either R. variabilis or D. tinctorius. We observed no variation in tadpole activity for time of day. Our results support the viability of the open field arena test in poison frogs and show that different species of poison frog tadpoles exhibit behavioral variation in the open field. We suggest this variation in tadpole activity and exploration may be due to different species having varying tadpole pond sizes and aggression levels.
