Morphological responses of three persistent native anuran species after forest conversion into monoculture pine plantations: tolerance or prosperity?

Abstract

Species loss by habitat replacement operating as an ecological filter is a well‐known consequence of modern human activities. In contrast, the ecological and evolutionary response of species overcoming those filters in converted habitats has not been thoroughly explored. Species that persist are subject to novel and potentially stressful conditions that may induce certain morphological changes. We evaluated changes in the functional morphology of three anuran species persisting after the conversion of areas of the Atlantic Forest into pine plantations. We specifically evaluated differences in body size and body condition indices, head width, and hind legs’ length between adult individuals from both habitats and sexes. Habitat conversion and sexual dimorphism affected the morphology of the three anurans, with varying effects upon species and traits. Regarding the effect of habitat conversion, Elachistocleis bicolor increased body condition in plantations with no changes in the other traits, Physalaemus cuvieri showed only a marginal increment in residual body mass in plantations, and Odontophrynus americanus exhibited a substantial increment in body size while maintaining its body condition in plantations. Remarkably, none of the results suggested these persistent anurans were stressed by forest conversion. This study shows that habitat conversion may induce intraspecific morphological changes in ecologically relevant traits of persistent species, and that disturbed areas do not necessarily imply stressful, low quality habitats affecting all persistent native species negatively.

How landfills affect amphibian’s morphology? The case of the invasive species Rhinella marina

“…For all toads collected, a measurements of the following traditional morphometric traits were performed: snout-vent-length (SVL) as a standard measure of body size (Gangenova et al, 2020), eye to eye distance (EED), mouth width (MW), head width (HW), number of glands radius-ulna (NGRU), number of glands femur (NGF), radius-ulna length (RUL), inter nostril distance (IND), interaural distance (ID), humerus length right and left (HLR, HLL), femur length right and left (FLR, FLL), tibia-bula length right and left (TFLR, TFLL), wrist width right and left, (WWR,WWL), radius-ulna width right and left (RUWR, RUWL), femur width right and left (FWR, FWL), spine to knee distance right and left (STKDR, STKFL), tibia-bula width right and left (TFWR, TFWL), foot length right and left (FoLR, FoLL), digit to digit length right and left (DTDLR, DTDLL). We calculated for each individual the standardized body condition index (BCI) as an estimator of body condition (Gangenova et al, 2020;Peig and Green, 2009).…”

“…In a world disturbed by anthropogenic activities, amphibians are highly susceptible to abiotic and biotic changes associated to habitat disturbance, that represent stressful conditions that imposing new selective pressures that promote the expression of different phenotypes (Gangenova et al, 2020; McDonnell and Hahs, 2015; Tejedo et al, 2010) that affect amphibian´s growth and body traits morphology (Davis et al, 2008). However, this phenotypic plasticity is not always advantageous (Levis et al, 2016) because the variation in traits morphology implies changes in the performance of the organisms, that can affect directly or indirectly their tness (Buckley et al, 2005).…”

“…Morphological changes in amphibians occur during their ontogenetic development, from the larvae phase to adult stage (Shi et al, 1996;Steinicke et al, 2015), hence amphibians of the same species can express different morphological forms, depending on the stress degree suffered during their development (Tejedo et al, 2010). These amphibians can also show different patterns of allometry, which is de ned as the intraspeci c variations in morphometric relationships between traits and body growth proportion (Delgado- Acevedo and Restrepo, 2008;Gangenova et al, 2020). The differences in allometric patterns can be detected when a particular trait size is compared with that of another individual of the same size environmental factors such as higher incidence of solar radiation, as well high temperatures and desiccation rates can promote variation in allometric patterns in amphibians (Buckley et al, 2005; Delgado- Acevedo and Restrepo, 2008;Gangenova et al, 2020).…”

“…In anthropized environments, species can extinct locally, or can persist in new disturbed habitats (Alberti et al, 2017;Lowry et al, 2013). Local species can also migrate and colonize made-man habitats as cities (Jennette et al, 2018) and their persistence depends on the availability of resources, ecological niches (Gangenova et al, 2020) as well of their phenotypic plasticity to be adapted to new environmental conditions (Tejedo et al, 2010). Speci cally, land lls are made-man environments which have been colonized by different vertebrate species due provide new resources and shelter (Plaza and Lambertucci, 2017).…”

“…In an anthropized world, emerges the necessity of evaluating the potential intraspeci c shifts in amphibians' morphology in order to get important information about the response capacity to habitat disturbance of this important and sensitive taxa (Gangenova et al, 2020;Lomolino et al, 2001). However, few studies have been realized to know the morphological variation of anurans under environmental disturbances (Gangenova et al, 2020), and much less studies have evaluated the amphibian's response in made-man environments as land lls (Jennette et al, 2018;Plaza and Lambertucci, 2017).…”