Search
Presentation Details
| Tadpole Fight Club: The Ontogeny of Aggression in Poison Frog Tadpoles |
| Lisa L. Surber-Cunningham1, Eva K. Fischer1,2. 1University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States; 2University of California Davis, Davis, CA, United States |
Juvenile aggression is an ecologically and evolutionarily important phenomenon that spans taxa and ranges from social play to lethal combat. As organisms develop and grow, the trade-offs of fighting may change. Thus, I hypothesize that juvenile aggression changes across development. I studied tadpoles of the Dyeing Poison Frog (Dendrobates tinctorius), as they are aggressive and change morphologically across ontogeny. I first categorized tadpoles into three developmental categories: early stage (no external limb development), middle stage (subtle external leg development), and late stage (prominent external leg development). I conducted aggression trials between pairs of tadpoles and recorded avoidance and aggressive behaviors. I found that while avoidance behavior does not significantly differ across development, aggressive behavior does. Late-stage tadpoles bit significantly less than early or middle stage tadpoles. This may be due to the physiological demand of metamorphosis or to legs hindering their physical fighting capability. The results of this project inform about developmental stage vulnerabilities, behavioral plasticity, and ecological and social dynamics. |