RT Journal Article
T1 Do active and passive antipredator defences in the ToadEpidalea calamita differ between males and females fromnatural habitats and agrosystems?
A1 Zamora-Camacho, Francisco Javier
AB Due to their assumed costs, simultaneous antipredator strategies are expected to face trade-offs, which, however, could be milder in individuals subjected to a more intense predator pressure. In this work, I studied the relationship between locomotion and parotoid glands in the natterjack toad, Epidalea calamita. Specifically, I predicted that individuals with reduced sprint speed would rely more on their chemical defences, having larger and more aposematically coloured parotoid glands. In addition, I expected this trade-off to be more evident in females and toads from pine grove habitats, because, according to previous work, males and toads from agrosystems are under greater predator pressure. However, sprint speed showed no relationship with coloration, but toads with proportionally greater parotoid glands were also proportionally faster. Thus, the costs of these antipredator traits might not be high enough to make them interfere, or the benefits of simultaneous optimisation of sprint speed and parotoid gland size might outweigh the costs of it in some individuals. In any case, habitat and sex did not affect these relationships, so the trends detected are valid across sexes and the habitats studied.
PB MDPI
SN Electronic: 1424-2818
YR 2021
FD 2021-11-25
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/4923
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/4923
LA eng
DS Docta Complutense
RD 20 abr 2025