Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Dec;88(12):1925-1935.
doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.13083. Epub 2019 Sep 9.

Predator-induced changes in the chemical defence of a vertebrate

Attila Hettyey  1 , Bálint Üveges  1 , Ágnes M Móricz  2 , László Drahos  3 , Robert J Capon  4 , Josh Van Buskirk  5 , Zoltán Tóth  1   6 , Veronika Bókony  1
Affiliations

Predator-induced changes in the chemical defence of a vertebrate

Attila Hettyey et al. J Anim Ecol. 2019 Dec.

Abstract

1. Inducible defences are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, but little is known about facultative changes in chemical defences in response to predators, especially so in vertebrates. 2. We tested for predator-induced changes in toxin production of larval common toads (Bufo bufo), which are known to synthesize bufadienolide compounds. 3. The experiment included larvae originating from three permanent and three temporary ponds reared in the presence or absence of chemical cues of three predators: dragonfly larvae, newts or fish. 4. Tadpoles raised with chemical cues of predation risk produced higher numbers of bufadienolide compounds and larger total bufadienolide quantities than predator-naive conspecifics. Further, the increase in intensity of chemical defence was greatest in response to fish, weakest to newts and intermediate to dragonfly larvae. Tadpoles originating from temporary and permanent ponds did not differ in their baseline toxin content or in the magnitude of their induced chemical responses. 5. These results provide the first compelling evidence for predator-induced changes in chemical defence of a vertebrate that may have evolved to enhance survival under predation risk.

Keywords: among-population variation; antipredator defence; anuran amphibian; local adaptation; phenotypic plasticity; poison.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Åbjörnsson, K., Hansson, L.-A., & Brönmark, C. (2004). Responses of prey from habitats with different predator regimes: Local adaptation and heritability. Ecology, 85, 1859-1866. https://doi.org/10.1890/03-0074
    1. Bane, V., Lehane, M., Dikshit, M., O’Riordan, A., & Furey, A. (2014). Tetrodotoxin: Chemistry, toxicity, source, distribution and detection. Toxins, 6, 693-755. https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins6020693
    1. Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. M., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1-48.
    1. Benard, M. F., & Fordyce, J. A. (2003). Are induced defenses costly? Consequences of predator-induced defenses in western toads, Bufo boreas. Ecology, 84, 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9658(2003)084[0068:AIDCCO]2.0.CO;2
    1. Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling for false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 67, 289-300.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources