# Boldness of aposematic vs drabber colored Auratus pops.



## gretzkyrh4 (Dec 30, 2007)

Hi,
I was just curious if any scientific papers have been published on the differences in behavior between aposematic and drabber colored populations of D. auratus? From reading posts and caresheets, it seems to be clearly accepted among keepers that there are behavioral differences and I have observed the same in the wild (canal zone vs. Taboga specimen), but I was just curious if any in the scientific community had really looked into the topic at depth.


Thanks
Chris


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## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

I did boldness work with the pumilio populations in Panama, and I did find significant differences in behavior between populations. I haven't completely analyzed the data to see what trends they follow, but near as I can tell, for pumilio, it's not correlated to cryptic versus conspicuous populations (pending final analysis, of course).

I would guess that the same goes with Auratus. What is determining the behavior is unknown, as far as I know. Toxicity or microhabitat cover could also determine such behavior.


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## gretzkyrh4 (Dec 30, 2007)

thanks for the reply Monarchz. Interesting to learn that boldness is unrelated to coloration at least in Pumilio. I suppose I should have more carefully considered the roles microhabitat, toxicity, and other factors may play in behavioral variability between populations, but it did not cross my mind when I first began noticing the behavioral differences in auratus in the field.

In regards to your work, are any future endevours addressing the other possible factors in the work? In anycase, I look forward learning more about your findings once the current study is published.

Chris


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## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

My first impression in regards to my work is that boldness is unrelated to color, but I haven't analyzed the data to say with certainty that it is unrelated. I just say my first impression is that it isn't because a notable "skittish" population is the Solartes whereas Isla Colon, which is somewhat cryptic is one of the boldest morphs. At least, it may not be related as intuition would dictate (maybe cryptic being bold and conspicuous being skittish; maybe larger SVL populations are bolder and smaller are not; it's hard to tell at this point). I also did microhabitat analysis on those same populations. I couldn't even guess what the results of that are, though, since I took so many dimensions of the study. I also collected frogs for toxicity analysis. I'm not doing that analysis though, so I don't know what's what at the moment. Hopefully after all is said and done, we'll have a good idea of what is and is not dictating the behavior of pumilio. Chances are that none of what we looked at is dictating the behavior of the frogs :lol: 

I have the tendency to take off more than I can chew when it comes to these sort of things :lol: I'm working with a lab at MSU to construct a phylogeny for these frogs, but I also want to do behavior and ecology work with these frogs so that after I'm done, we can have a pretty clear idea on D. pumilio evolution, ecology, and behavior


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

How is drabbness being measured? That's a pretty subjective trait and may need to take into consideration the reflectance of other wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum... UV for example.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Yeah I'd definately look into the full spectrum and not concentrate what *we* find aposematic.... because honestly we are the ones they developed the aposematic coloration for so what might not be obviously constrasting from their background to us doesn't mean it isn't the opposite for what the predators they are trying to discourage.

I don't believe anyone has looked into it in the wild populations, it's just a general trend noticed in captive animals that otherwise should have been used to humans being around. It doesn't always hold true, and often our set ups can be an important influence in their behavior.


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## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

bbrock said:


> How is drabbness being measured? That's a pretty subjective trait and may need to take into consideration the reflectance of other wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum... UV for example.


I've had to verify what we used, but we took spectrometry of the various parts on a frog (which I believe included the full spectrum including UV). We also took some reflectance measurements of the leaf litter where frogs were found for conspicuous comparison. I also took pictures of frogs in situ from a distance so that we could analyze how conspicuous the frog was in a natural setting.

Here's a great example. This is one of the photos of Aguacate. Looking at just the frog, you'd probably say that a blue frog is aposematic, but in situ, it's arguable cryptic.










I've taken to referring to the frogs as conspicuous or cryptic rather than aposematic pretty much because we don't know that they're "truly" aposematic. I wouldn't say that they developed the coloration for us, though. I think it'd be safer to say that they developed the bright coloration for color visioned predators (and possibly conspecifics).


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

MonarchzMan said:


> bbrock said:
> 
> 
> > How is drabbness being measured? That's a pretty subjective trait and may need to take into consideration the reflectance of other wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum... UV for example.
> ...


I like it. And this is one of those doubly challenging studies because both the condition and response variables ("boldness" and "conspicuousness") are pretty subjective parameters which have to be converted to some quantitative measurement. So if you did measure reflectance across a full spectrum of both subject and background, that's a great method which you can analyze and quantify and a lot of different ways. Now how about the "boldness" measurement? I hope you don't mind the grilling, I do find the challenges of behavioral ecology to be both daunting and fascinating and always enjoy seeing ways that researchers make impossible measurements possible.


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## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

That was a tough one, but overall, I like the method. Essentially, I ranked the frogs on how close I could get to them before they hopped _away_ from me. I approached at a constant rate of about 5 cm/s and then rated the frogs. 5 being 40cm or more, 4 being between 40cm and 20cm, 3 being between 20cm and 10cm, 2 being between 10cm and 5cm, 1 being between 5cm and 0cm, and 0 being a touch. After that, I waited 30 seconds then recorded the farthest point the frog got to (some frogs really didn't care, and hopped away, then hopped back towards me). It'll give a good general idea on how close a person is able to get (and presumably a predator), and how far it would hope away, thus showing boldness.

I did this all out in the field as I found the frogs. I tried doing a more controlled experiment (frogs on a plywood board) but got very random results, and typically the frogs traveled much further than they would in the wild. I'd still like to do a controlled set up so that I can remove most all of other stimuli that would be in the jungle, but I have yet to figure out how to feasibly do it.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

And I wonder how taking the frog out of it's comfort zone would influence the findings... part of their boldness may be related to being in their territories they know well, and knowing if they do have doubts at some point to what you're doing, they have a bolt hole to run too... moved to a completely unknown area I'm not suprised they freaked out a bit (not to mention catching them to do so would have put them in prey mode).


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

KeroKero said:


> And I wonder how taking the frog out of it's comfort zone would influence the findings... part of their boldness may be related to being in their territories they know well, and knowing if they do have doubts at some point to what you're doing, they have a bolt hole to run too... moved to a completely unknown area I'm not suprised they freaked out a bit (not to mention catching them to do so would have put them in prey mode).


My thoughts exactly. I think the control has to be frogs emersed in their "normal" daily environment. Taking them out of that context introduces more confounding effects on their behavior than you could possibly count.


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## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

KeroKero said:


> And I wonder how taking the frog out of it's comfort zone would influence the findings... part of their boldness may be related to being in their territories they know well, and knowing if they do have doubts at some point to what you're doing, they have a bolt hole to run too... moved to a completely unknown area I'm not suprised they freaked out a bit (not to mention catching them to do so would have put them in prey mode).


That, IMO, was precisely the problem that we had. I tried putting a bit of vines and leaf litter on the board to give them a more "natural" feel, but they still acted randomly. It's probably one of those experiments where you can't really have an adequate control.


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