10.5061/DRYAD.BK5S3
Pettit, Lachlan J.
University of Sydney
Greenlees, Matthew J.
University of Sydney
Shine, Richard
University of Sydney
Data from: Is the enhanced dispersal rate seen at invasion fronts a
behaviourally plastic response to encountering novel ecological
conditions?
Dryad
dataset
2016
alien species
Bufo marinus
Rhinella marina
chaunus marinus
spatial sorting
chaunus marinus
2016-08-23T21:45:31Z
2016-08-23T21:45:31Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2016.0539
64327 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
As a population expands into novel areas (as occurs in biological
invasions), the range edge becomes dominated by rapidly dispersing
individuals—thereby accelerating the rate of population spread. That
acceleration has been attributed to evolutionary processes (natural
selection and spatial sorting), to which we add a third complementary
process: behavioural plasticity. Encountering environmental novelty may
directly elicit an increased rate of dispersal. When we reciprocally
translocated cane toads (Rhinella marina) among study sites in southern
Australia, the transported animals massively increased dispersal rates
relative to residents (to an extent similar to the evolved increase
between range-core versus invasion-front toad populations in Australia).
The responses of these translocated toads show that even range-core toads
are capable of the long-distance dispersal rates of invasion-front
conspecifics and suggest that rapid dispersal (rather than evolving de
novo) has simply been expanded from facultative to constitutive
expression.
Cane toad dispersal rateDispersal data of cane toads radio-tracked in
Australia. Toads are grouped in four categories; core (Northern QLD) toads
tracked in 1992-1993 and front (NT) toads tracked in 2006, while resident
and translocated (Northern NSW) toads were tracked in 2015-2016. Toads in
the resident and translocated categories are additionally grouped by
transport stress treatment (low or high), collection site and release
site. Three dispersal-relevant parameters are calculated for each toad:
(1) mean distance per move (cumulative distances travelled divided by the
number of times a toad changed diurnal shelter site); (2) mean
displacement per day (total linear distance between the release point and
final position divided by the number of days; such that a toad that
returned to its initial release point by the end of the five-day period
would receive a score of zero); and (3) daily rate of changes in
shelter-sites (the number of shelter sites divided by number of
observations).Cane toad dispersal.xlsx
Australia