Title |
Reassessment of the environmental mechanisms controlling developmental polyphenism in spadefoot toad tadpoles
|
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Published in |
Oecologia, August 2004
|
DOI | 10.1007/s00442-004-1672-6 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Brian L. Storz |
Abstract |
Identifying the environmental mechanism(s) controlling developmental polyphenism is the first step in gaining a mechanistic and evolutionary understanding of the factors responsible for its expression and evolution. Tadpoles of the spadefoot toad Spea multiplicata can display either a "typical" omnivorous or a carnivorous phenotype. Exogenous thyroxine and feeding on conspecific tadpoles have been accepted as triggers for development of the carnivorous phenotype on the basis of a series of studies in the early 1990s. I repeated the thyroxine and conspecific-feeding assays and demonstrated that neither exogenous thyroxine nor feeding on conspecifics induces the carnivorous phenotype. Previous researchers used simple ratio statistics to argue that field-collected carnivores and thyroxine-treated tadpoles are similar, and my results supported these claims if I used the same simple ratio methodology. However, investigation of trait developmental trajectories and allometries for field-collected carnivores and thyroxine-treated and conspecific-fed tadpoles show that these phenotypes are profoundly different. |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
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United States | 3 | 9% |
Brazil | 2 | 6% |
Unknown | 29 | 85% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
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Researcher | 6 | 18% |
Professor > Associate Professor | 4 | 12% |
Student > Master | 4 | 12% |
Student > Bachelor | 3 | 9% |
Other | 8 | 24% |
Unknown | 3 | 9% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
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Environmental Science | 3 | 9% |
Earth and Planetary Sciences | 1 | 3% |
Unknown | 6 | 18% |