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Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range
Dispersal forms are an important component of the ecology of many animals, and reach particular importance for predicting ranges of invasive species. African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) move overland between water bodies, but all empirical studies are from invasive populations with none from their...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683045/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29134157 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4039 |
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author | De Villiers, F. André Measey, John |
author_facet | De Villiers, F. André Measey, John |
author_sort | De Villiers, F. André |
collection | PubMed |
description | Dispersal forms are an important component of the ecology of many animals, and reach particular importance for predicting ranges of invasive species. African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) move overland between water bodies, but all empirical studies are from invasive populations with none from their native southern Africa. Here we report on incidents of overland movement found through a capture-recapture study carried out over a three year period in Overstrand, South Africa. The maximum distance moved was 2.4 km with most of the 91 animals, representing 5% of the population, moving ∼150 m. We found no differences in distances moved by males and females, despite the former being smaller. Fewer males moved overland, but this was no different from the sex bias found in the population. In laboratory performance trials, we found that males outperformed females, in both distance moved and time to exhaustion, when corrected for size. Overland movement occurred throughout the year, but reached peaks in spring and early summer when temporary water bodies were drying. Despite permanent impoundments being located within the study area, we found no evidence for migrations of animals between temporary and permanent water bodies. Our study provides the first dispersal kernel for X. laevis and suggests that it is similar to many non-pipid anurans with respect to dispersal. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5683045 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56830452017-11-13 Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range De Villiers, F. André Measey, John PeerJ Animal Behavior Dispersal forms are an important component of the ecology of many animals, and reach particular importance for predicting ranges of invasive species. African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) move overland between water bodies, but all empirical studies are from invasive populations with none from their native southern Africa. Here we report on incidents of overland movement found through a capture-recapture study carried out over a three year period in Overstrand, South Africa. The maximum distance moved was 2.4 km with most of the 91 animals, representing 5% of the population, moving ∼150 m. We found no differences in distances moved by males and females, despite the former being smaller. Fewer males moved overland, but this was no different from the sex bias found in the population. In laboratory performance trials, we found that males outperformed females, in both distance moved and time to exhaustion, when corrected for size. Overland movement occurred throughout the year, but reached peaks in spring and early summer when temporary water bodies were drying. Despite permanent impoundments being located within the study area, we found no evidence for migrations of animals between temporary and permanent water bodies. Our study provides the first dispersal kernel for X. laevis and suggests that it is similar to many non-pipid anurans with respect to dispersal. PeerJ Inc. 2017-11-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5683045/ /pubmed/29134157 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4039 Text en ©2017 De Villiers and Measey http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Animal Behavior De Villiers, F. André Measey, John Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range |
title | Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range |
title_full | Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range |
title_fullStr | Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range |
title_full_unstemmed | Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range |
title_short | Overland movement in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range |
title_sort | overland movement in african clawed frogs (xenopus laevis): empirical dispersal data from within their native range |
topic | Animal Behavior |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683045/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29134157 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4039 |
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