The purpose of this study was to investigate the survival and
movements of newly metamorphosed Northern Red-legged frogs (Rana
aurora aurora) as they emigrated from two ephemeral breeding ponds.
Quantifying survival and movement rates will be important to our
understanding how changes to terrestrial and aquatic systems affect
behavior and population dynamics. I manipulated food availability for a
subset of uniquely marked metamorphic frogs and then analyzed temporal
and spatial aspects of their recapture in forest pitfall traps relative to body
size and date of metamorphosis. The probability of surviving and
emigrating increased strongly with increasing body size and declined for
frogs metamorphosing later in the season. Larger body size was
associated with earlier emigration and greater correlation of movements
with rainfall events. Within a pond, the time elapsed between
metamorphosis and emigration was not affected by the pond drying. My
results demonstrate that conditions during the tadpole stage which affect
body size and the timing of metamorphosis may have a dramatic impact
on the performance of frogs during their initial transition into the terrestrial
environment. / Graduation date: 2004
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/30192 |
| Date | 17 June 2003 |
| Creators | Chelgren, Nathan D. |
| Contributors | Rosenberg, Daniel K., Heppell, Selina S. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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