We investigated the diet of cane toads () inhabiting urbanized areas in southwest Florida to provide high taxonomic resolution of prey items, contrast toad diets between sampling seasons and sexes, and assess this invasive species' ecological role in the urban landscape. A pest control agency collected cane toads from two golf course communities in Naples, Florida, USA during November-December 2018 (early dry season) and June-July 2019 (early wet season), and faunal stomach contents were quantified from a random subsample of 240 adult toads (30 males and 30 females from each community and season). Yellow-banded millipedes (), big-headed ants ( spp.), and hunting billbugs () were the most frequently consumed prey items and had the highest total numbers and/or volume with corresponding highest indices of relative importance. There was considerable overlap in the seasonal prey importance values for each golf course community and little if any difference in the importance values between toad sexes in each community. Nonetheless, big-headed ants were the most important prey in both communities during the wet season, while yellow-banded millipedes were the most important dry season prey in one community and hunting billbugs the most important in the other. Despite limited spatiotemporal sampling effort, our results indicated that cane toad was consuming arthropod taxa considered pests in the urban ecosystem. Further studies are needed to investigate the potential effects of human activities and environmental variability on the cane toad diet and to determine whether cane toads act as a biological control for pest populations.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani13182898 | DOI Listing |
R Soc Open Sci
January 2025
Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
Biological invasions can disrupt the close and longstanding coevolved relationships between host and parasites. At the same time, the shifting selective forces acting on demography during invasion can result in rapid evolution of traits in both host and parasite. Hosts at the invasion front may reduce investment into costly immune defences and redistribute those resources to other fitness-enhancing traits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntegr Zool
January 2025
School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
The invasion of cane toads (Rhinella marina) across tropical Australia has resulted in the rapid evolution of traits that enable higher rates of dispersal, and that adapt toads to hot dry climates. In anurans, a larger heart facilitates both locomotor activity and desiccation tolerance. Heart size is also often affected, either directly or indirectly, by parasite infections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZootaxa
May 2024
Laboratório de Herpetologia e Comportamento Animal; Departamento de Ecologia; Instituto de Ciências Biológicas; Universidade Federal de Goiás; 74690-900 Goiânia; GO; Brazil.
Genome Biol Evol
November 2024
Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, School of Biotechnology & Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been widely used in genetics research for decades. Contamination from nuclear DNA of mitochondrial origin (NUMTs) can confound studies of phylogenetic relationships and mtDNA heteroplasmy. Homology searches with mtDNA are widely used to detect NUMTs in the nuclear genome.
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