Homing behavior in native range Rhinella marina


SOCIETY FOR INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY
2021 VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING (VAM)
January 3 – Febuary 28, 2021

Meeting Abstract


78-2  Sat Jan 2  Homing behavior in native range Rhinella marina Shaykevich, DA*; Pašukonis, A; O’Connell, LA; Stanford University; Stanford University; Stanford University shaykeda@stanford.edu

All animals use and navigate space in order to complete vital tasks, such as foraging, mating, and providing care for young. While less studied than some other classes of organisms, many amphibians exhibit sophisticated use of space. The cane toad, Rhinella marina, is a bufonid species commonly found throughout Central and South America, but has gained notoriety as a human introduced invader in Australia. There has been considerable attention to the spatial dynamics of invasive toads, but little is known about the behaviors and navigational abilities of native R. marina. To test toad ability to return to a home site after being displaced, we performed translocation-homing experiments in the field. Toads were tagged and tracked with radio transmitters to determine baseline movements, showing a general fidelity to specific sites with relatively large movements happening during mating events. Toads were then translocated from their home sites and tracked as they returned home; the toads showed successful navigation following 500 and 1000 meter translocations. Such homing behavior is especially interesting as toads are technically not territorial. Further analysis is needed to understand the true scale of space use and potential navigation abilities in cane toads. Precise homing behavior in a species also paves the way for combining field navigation studies with neuroscience imaging techniques to characterize brain activity associated with homing.

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