The significance of spatial memory for water finding in a tadpole-transporting frog.

ABSTRACT: The ability to associate environmental cues with valuable resources strongly increases the chances of finding them again, and thus memory often guides animal movement. For example, many temperate region amphibians show strong breeding site fidelity and will return to the same areas even after the ponds have been destroyed. In contrast, many tropical amphibians depend on exploitation of small, scattered and fluctuating resources such as ephemeral pools for reproduction. It remains unknown whether tropical amphibians rely on spatial memory for effective exploitation of their reproductive resources. Poison frogs (Dendrobatidae) routinely shuttle their tadpoles from terrestrial clutches to dispersed aquatic deposition sites. We investigated the role of spatial memory for relocating previously

SUBMITTER: Pasukonis A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5321284 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature