TY - JOUR
T1 - Seasonal changes in diet and chemical defense in the Climbing Mantella frog (Mantella laevigata)
AU - Moskowitz, Nora A.
AU - Roland, Alexandre B.
AU - Fischer, Eva K.
AU - Ranaivorazo, Ndimbintsoa
AU - Vidoudez, Charles
AU - Aguilar, Marianne T.
AU - Caldera, Sophia M.
AU - Chea, Jacqueline
AU - Cristus, Miruna G.
AU - Crowdis, Jett P.
AU - DeMessie, Bluyé
AU - DesJardins-Park, Caroline R.
AU - Effenberger, Audrey H.
AU - Flores, Felipe
AU - Giles, Michael
AU - He, Emma Y.
AU - Izmaylov, Nike S.
AU - Lee, Chang Won C.
AU - Pagel, Nicholas A.
AU - Phu, Krystal K.
AU - Rosen, Leah U.
AU - Seda, Danielle A.
AU - Shen, Yong
AU - Vargas, Santiago
AU - Murray, Andrew W.
AU - Abebe, Eden
AU - Trauger, Sunia A.
AU - Donoso, David A.
AU - Vences, Miguel
AU - O’Connell, Lauren A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by Harvard University Bauer Fellowship (http://archive.sysbio. harvard.edu/CSB/research/fellows.html) to LAO; National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov) IOS-1557684 to LAO; National Geographic Society (www.nationalgeographic.org/grants) 9685-15 to LAO; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor’s Award (www.hhmi.org/developing-scientists/hhmi-professors) 520008146 to AWM. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Moskowitz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/12
Y1 - 2018/12
N2 - Poison frogs acquire chemical defenses from the environment for protection against potential predators. These defensive chemicals are lipophilic alkaloids that are sequestered by poison frogs from dietary arthropods and stored in skin glands. Despite decades of research focusing on identifying poison frog alkaloids, we know relatively little about how environmental variation and subsequent arthropod availability impacts alkaloid loads in poison frogs. We investigated how seasonal environmental variation influences poison frog chemical profiles through changes in the diet of the Climbing Mantella (Mantella laevigata). We collected M. laevigata females on the Nosy Mangabe island reserve in Madagascar during the wet and dry seasons and tested the hypothesis that seasonal differences in rainfall is associated with changes in diet composition and skin alkaloid profiles of M. laevigata. The arthropod diet of each frog was characterized into five groups (i.e. ants, termites, mites, insect larvae, or ‘other’) using visual identification and cytochrome oxidase 1 DNA barcoding. We found that frog diet differed between the wet and dry seasons, where frogs had a more diverse diet in the wet season and consumed a higher percentage of ants in the dry season. To determine if seasonality was associated with variation in frog defensive chemical composition, we used gas chromatography / mass spectrometry to quantify alkaloids from individual skin samples. Although the assortment of identified alkaloids was similar across seasons, we detected significant differences in the abundance of certain alkaloids, which we hypothesize reflects seasonal variation in the diet of M. laevigata. We suggest that these variations could originate from seasonal changes in either arthropod leaf litter composition or changes in frog behavioral patterns. Although additional studies are needed to understand the consequences of long-term environmental shifts, this work suggests that alkaloid profiles are relatively robust against short-term environmental perturbations.
AB - Poison frogs acquire chemical defenses from the environment for protection against potential predators. These defensive chemicals are lipophilic alkaloids that are sequestered by poison frogs from dietary arthropods and stored in skin glands. Despite decades of research focusing on identifying poison frog alkaloids, we know relatively little about how environmental variation and subsequent arthropod availability impacts alkaloid loads in poison frogs. We investigated how seasonal environmental variation influences poison frog chemical profiles through changes in the diet of the Climbing Mantella (Mantella laevigata). We collected M. laevigata females on the Nosy Mangabe island reserve in Madagascar during the wet and dry seasons and tested the hypothesis that seasonal differences in rainfall is associated with changes in diet composition and skin alkaloid profiles of M. laevigata. The arthropod diet of each frog was characterized into five groups (i.e. ants, termites, mites, insect larvae, or ‘other’) using visual identification and cytochrome oxidase 1 DNA barcoding. We found that frog diet differed between the wet and dry seasons, where frogs had a more diverse diet in the wet season and consumed a higher percentage of ants in the dry season. To determine if seasonality was associated with variation in frog defensive chemical composition, we used gas chromatography / mass spectrometry to quantify alkaloids from individual skin samples. Although the assortment of identified alkaloids was similar across seasons, we detected significant differences in the abundance of certain alkaloids, which we hypothesize reflects seasonal variation in the diet of M. laevigata. We suggest that these variations could originate from seasonal changes in either arthropod leaf litter composition or changes in frog behavioral patterns. Although additional studies are needed to understand the consequences of long-term environmental shifts, this work suggests that alkaloid profiles are relatively robust against short-term environmental perturbations.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0207940
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0207940
M3 - Article
C2 - 30586404
AN - SCOPUS:85059210652
VL - 13
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 12
M1 - e0207940
ER -