Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia

Mitchell, Joseph C.; Pague, Christopher A.; Martof, Bernard S.; Palmer, William M.; Bailey, Joseph R.; Harrison, Julian R.

doi:10.2307/1444501

Cited by 46 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…For example, A. blanchardi and R. sphenocephala are semi-aquatic and found most often on the banks of waterbodies (Lehtinen and Skinner, 2006;Meade, 2008), while R. catesbeiana is fully aquatic and these frogs spend most of their time submerged in the shallow portions of ponds, lakes, swamps, and streams (Bruening, 2002). In contrast, both Hyla species prefer arboreal habitats (Martof et al, 1980;Harding, 1997); however, H. cinerea often rests on the shorter green vegetation that surrounds the banks of waterbodies. Conversely, H. chrysoscelis/versicolor is most often found higher in trees that are sometimes further away from water sources (Sievert and Sievert, 2021).…”

Section: Sample Collectionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Host ecology drives frog skin microbiome diversity across ecotone in South-Central North America

Smith,

Watters,

Siler

2023

Front. Microbiomes

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Anurans (frogs and toads) are an ecologically diverse group of vertebrate organisms that display a myriad of reproductive modes and life history traits. To persist in such an expansive array of habitats, these organisms have evolved specialized skin that is used for respiration while also protecting against moisture loss, pathogens, and environmental contaminants. Anuran skin is also colonized by communities of symbiotic microorganisms, and these skin microbiota serve critical roles in numerous processes associated with anuran host health and persistence such as pathogen resistance and immunity. However, gaps remain in our understanding of the environmental and evolutionary processes that shape frog skin microbial communities. Here, we combined existing anuran disease data with 16S rRNA skin microbial inventories to elucidate the roles that geographic location, host evolutionary history, host ecology, and pathogen presence play in the microbial community assemblage of five co-distributed frog host species in Oklahoma. These focal species possess distinct ecological preferences: aquatic, semi-aquatic, and arboreal, and our results indicate that host ecology is the primary driver of frog skin microbial community structure. Additionally, compositional differences were observed among select host species based on geographic location, but this was not consistent among all five frog species. We did not find evidence of phylogenetic signal among our samples and results from the Classification and Regression Tree Analysis revealed that the presence of the amphibian pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and the severity of infection were not drivers of skin microbiome differences among our focal host species. Results from this comparative study contribute to our growing understanding of the environmental and host-associated drivers of skin microbial community assemblage and represents one of the first studies on landscape-level variation in skin microbial communities among North American frogs.

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Section: Sample Collectionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Host ecology drives frog skin microbiome diversity across ecotone in South-Central North America

Smith,

Watters,

Siler

2023

Front. Microbiomes

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“…To test these hypotheses, we encourage future researchers (including amateur naturalists and citizen scientists) to document spatial and temporal variation in courtship, migration, and overwintering across the distribution of the E. bislineata species complex. Some authors suggest that courtship begins in the later summer or fall (Stewart, 1968;Martof et al, 1980), while others suspect that it occurs only or mostly in the spring (Koehring, 1925;Sever, 1991). Although direct observations of courtship in the field may remain inevitably scarce, it is simple to check a female salamander's cloaca for the presence of a spermatophore to evaluate courtship within the last ~24 h. Some populations are reported to overwinter underwater in streams (Stewart, 1968;Bruce, 1988;Pierson, 2019a) while others are reported to overwinter in terrestrial (or semiaquatic) habitats nearby (Bishop, 1941;Weichert, 1945).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geographic Variation in the Reproductive Phenology of a Widespread Amphibian

Pierson

Blake-Sinclair

Rittenburg

et al. 2023

Journal of Herpetology

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Geographic variation in reproductive phenology can reveal how life history is shaped by the environment. For amphibians, the timing of reproduction has downstream consequences on other life history traits such as larval period and size at metamorphosis. Two-lined Salamanders (Eurycea bislineata species complex) are widespread across the eastern United States and Canada and exhibit dramatic geographic variation in reproductive morphology, reproductive behavior, and larval life history, and thus make compelling models for studying these processes. Here, we compile courtship and nesting records from citizen science data, published literature, museum records, field notes, and social media to describe the geographic variation of reproductive phenology in the E. bislineata species complex. We demonstrate that the date of oviposition is negatively correlated with mean annual temperature and examine how this may interact with the timing of other seasonal behaviors such as migration and overwintering. Finally, we discuss how these geographic patterns may influence the evolution of reproductive tactics through differences in the spatial and temporal clustering of courtship opportunities in terrestrial and aquatic environments.

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“…We identified whole prey items using the naked eye and 40X dissection microscopes. We used dichotomous keys (Chesapeake Bay Multispecies Monitoring and Assessment Program and Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program 2013, 2020; Moore and Spence 1974; Roest 1991; Daniels 1996; Cooper 2004 a , b , c , d , e, f ) and identification guides (Martof et al 1980, Webster et al 1985, Page and Burr 1991, Conant and Stebbins 1999, Reid 2006, Beane et al 2010) to identify scales, exoskeletons, and other parts. We identified prey items to the lowest possible taxonomic classification.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diet of the North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) in North Carolina using 2 methods

Sanders,

Spear,

Black

et al. 2023

Wildlife Society Bulletin

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River otters (Lontra canadensis) are key predators in North Carolina's aquatic systems, but they are often seen as competitors by anglers and fish hatcheries. River otter diets typically consist of fish and crayfish, but also include occasional herpetofauna, mammals, and birds. While standard diet studies focus on identification of prey through manual examination of stomach contents and feces, metabarcoding DNA analysis has become more popular to determine the presence or frequency of species that are often missed, misidentified, or underestimated. We collected river otter carcasses from licensed trappers and fur dealers across North Carolina from the 2009–10 trapping season through the 2015–16 season. We conducted necropsies and analyzed the stomach contents using standard observational methods and metabarcoding DNA analysis. We manually examined 522 river otter stomachs, of which 377 contained prey items. Decapods (crustaceans) were identified in 41% of stomachs and made up similar percentages within each Furbearer Management Unit (FMU). The order Perciformes composed the majority (62%) of fish prey across all stomach samples. Coastal Plain river otters primarily consumed crustaceans (50%) and fish (40%). Piedmont and Mountain river otters consumed fish (32% and 42%, respectively) most often followed by crustaceans (62% and 50%, respectively). Prey selection was similar between the sexes. Out of 368 samples, metabarcoding DNA examination was able to reliably match 164 prey items to species, 5 classes, 18 orders, 25 families, and 42 genera. Fishes made up 33% of the identifications, particularly Perciformes (13%), Cypriniformes (7%), and Siluriformes (5%). Twelve percent of identifications was made up by Amphibia, split evenly by Anura and Urodela. No birds or reptiles were detected in the Mountain or Piedmont FMUs, and no mammals were detected in the Coastal Plain or Mountain FMU. Overall, river otters in North Carolina consume a large variety of prey that varied regionally. The manual examination provided identifications that were not provided by the DNA examination (i.e., crayfish, brown snakes), while the DNA examination provided a more accurate identification of the broad array of prey items. To understand the composition of annual river otter diets we encourage managers to expand research to evaluate river otter diets year‐round and incorporate additional noninvasive methods (e.g., scat surveys) throughout the year.

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Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia

Cited by 46 publications

References 0 publications

Host ecology drives frog skin microbiome diversity across ecotone in South-Central North America

Host ecology drives frog skin microbiome diversity across ecotone in South-Central North America

Geographic Variation in the Reproductive Phenology of a Widespread Amphibian

Diet of the North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) in North Carolina using 2 methods

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