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Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species

Many organisms use inducible defenses as protection against predators. In animals, inducible defenses may manifest as changes in behavior, morphology, physiology, or life history, and prey species can adjust their defensive responses based on the dangerousness of predators. Analogously, prey may als...

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Autores principales: Üveges, Bálint, Szederkényi, Márk, Mahr, Katharina, Móricz, Ágnes M., Krüzselyi, Dániel, Bókony, Veronika, Hoi, Herbert, Hettyey, Attila
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6580299/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31236221
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5202
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author Üveges, Bálint
Szederkényi, Márk
Mahr, Katharina
Móricz, Ágnes M.
Krüzselyi, Dániel
Bókony, Veronika
Hoi, Herbert
Hettyey, Attila
author_facet Üveges, Bálint
Szederkényi, Márk
Mahr, Katharina
Móricz, Ágnes M.
Krüzselyi, Dániel
Bókony, Veronika
Hoi, Herbert
Hettyey, Attila
author_sort Üveges, Bálint
collection PubMed
description Many organisms use inducible defenses as protection against predators. In animals, inducible defenses may manifest as changes in behavior, morphology, physiology, or life history, and prey species can adjust their defensive responses based on the dangerousness of predators. Analogously, prey may also change the composition and quantity of defensive chemicals when they coexist with different predators, but such predator‐induced plasticity in chemical defenses remains elusive in vertebrates. In this study, we investigated whether tadpoles of the common toad (Bufo bufo) adjust their chemical defenses to predation risk in general and specifically to the presence of different predator species; furthermore, we assessed the adaptive value of the induced defense. We reared tadpoles in the presence or absence of one of four caged predator species in a mesocosm experiment, analyzed the composition and quantity of their bufadienolide toxins, and exposed them to free‐ranging predators. We found that toad tadpoles did not respond to predation risk by upregulating their bufadienolide synthesis. Fishes and newts consumed only a small percentage of toad tadpoles, suggesting that bufadienolides provided protection against vertebrate predators, irrespective of the rearing environment. Backswimmers consumed toad tadpoles regardless of treatment. Dragonfly larvae were the most voracious predators and consumed more predator‐naïve toad tadpoles than tadpoles raised in the presence of dragonfly cues. These results suggest that tadpoles in our experiment had high enough toxin levels for an effective defense against vertebrate predators even in the absence of predator cues. The lack of predator‐induced phenotypic plasticity in bufadienolide synthesis may be due to local adaptation for constantly high chemical defense against fishes in the study population and/or due to the high density of conspecifics.
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spelling pubmed-65802992019-06-24 Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species Üveges, Bálint Szederkényi, Márk Mahr, Katharina Móricz, Ágnes M. Krüzselyi, Dániel Bókony, Veronika Hoi, Herbert Hettyey, Attila Ecol Evol Original Research Many organisms use inducible defenses as protection against predators. In animals, inducible defenses may manifest as changes in behavior, morphology, physiology, or life history, and prey species can adjust their defensive responses based on the dangerousness of predators. Analogously, prey may also change the composition and quantity of defensive chemicals when they coexist with different predators, but such predator‐induced plasticity in chemical defenses remains elusive in vertebrates. In this study, we investigated whether tadpoles of the common toad (Bufo bufo) adjust their chemical defenses to predation risk in general and specifically to the presence of different predator species; furthermore, we assessed the adaptive value of the induced defense. We reared tadpoles in the presence or absence of one of four caged predator species in a mesocosm experiment, analyzed the composition and quantity of their bufadienolide toxins, and exposed them to free‐ranging predators. We found that toad tadpoles did not respond to predation risk by upregulating their bufadienolide synthesis. Fishes and newts consumed only a small percentage of toad tadpoles, suggesting that bufadienolides provided protection against vertebrate predators, irrespective of the rearing environment. Backswimmers consumed toad tadpoles regardless of treatment. Dragonfly larvae were the most voracious predators and consumed more predator‐naïve toad tadpoles than tadpoles raised in the presence of dragonfly cues. These results suggest that tadpoles in our experiment had high enough toxin levels for an effective defense against vertebrate predators even in the absence of predator cues. The lack of predator‐induced phenotypic plasticity in bufadienolide synthesis may be due to local adaptation for constantly high chemical defense against fishes in the study population and/or due to the high density of conspecifics. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-04-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6580299/ /pubmed/31236221 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5202 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Üveges, Bálint
Szederkényi, Márk
Mahr, Katharina
Móricz, Ágnes M.
Krüzselyi, Dániel
Bókony, Veronika
Hoi, Herbert
Hettyey, Attila
Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species
title Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species
title_full Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species
title_fullStr Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species
title_full_unstemmed Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species
title_short Chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species
title_sort chemical defense of toad tadpoles under risk by four predator species
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6580299/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31236221
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5202
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