Data from: Developmental plasticity to desiccation risk in tadpoles of a tropical inselberg specialist
Data files
Apr 02, 2026 version files 46.28 KB
Abstract
Developmental plasticity evolves in heterogeneous environmental conditions as long as individuals can accurately perceive them. A paradigmatic example of developmental plasticity is the ability of amphibian larvae to alter growth and development in response to the risk of pond drying. Such responses are often found in amphibian species breeding in highly dynamic water bodies with high desiccation risk. The inselbergs of the Guianan Shield are rocky outcrops with extremely high and fluctuating temperatures and a marked seasonality in precipitation. During the rainy season, eroded depressions form precipitation-dependent pools with a high and variable risk of desiccation within a timeframe of a few days. The frog Leptodactylus lithonaetes specializes in breeding in this extreme environment, and its tadpoles are thus forced to cope with desiccation risk by trading off changes in their developmental trajectories and physiological performance. We experimentally assessed the effect of different levels of desiccation risk on developmental rate, growth, and temperature-depending locomotor performance in tadpoles of Leptodactylus lithonaetes. We did not find an effect of desiccation risk on developmental rate, but under simulated drying conditions, tadpoles showed larger body size, greater body mass, and enhanced locomotor performance compared to constant (high or low) water levels. These results suggest that drying pools offer cues that trigger developmental and behavioral changes in these tadpoles, enabling them to enhance growth without accelerating development over a short time span. We discuss the potential compensatory mechanisms behind these responses and highlight the need for further investigations in species with semiterrestrial life histories in extreme environments.
This README file was generated on 14-04-2024 by Alexandra Delgadillo Méndez
These data were collected from tadpoles of the species Leptodactylus lithonaetes exposed experimentally to three treatments of water level: High water level, drying water level, and low water level. After 21 days of exposition to the treatments, we took size measurements per each tadpole and performed locomotor performance trials. The database presented here contains the variables measured.
GENERAL INFORMATION
1. Title of the dataset:
Data for: DEVELOPMENTAL PLASTICITY TO DESICCATION RISK IN TADPOLES OF A TROPICAL INSELBERG SPECIALIST
2. Author information:
Principal Investigator - Corresponding author
Name: Alexandra Delgadillo Méndez
Institution: Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and Estación Biológica Doñana (Sevilla, España).
E-mail: adelgadillo@uniandes.edu.co
3. Date of data collection:
July – August 2019
4. Geographic location of data collection:
Reserva Natural Bojonawi, Puerto Carreño, Colombia.
5. Funding sources that supported the collection of the data:
Facultad de Ciencias from Universidad de Los Andes‐Colombia (grants to Alexandra Delgadillo years 2019, 2022, 2023)
National Program for Women in Science UNESCO - L'ORÉAL-MINCIENCIAS-ICETEX, 2021, Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (grant # 80740-201-2019 code 120480863597)
Plan Nacional I+D of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant # PID2020-119517GB-I00).
SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION
1. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain
2. Publications that use the data:
Paper in review, submitted to Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (15-01-2024):
Delgadillo Méndez, A., Amézquita, A., Avellaneda Moreno, M.A., Gonzalez Arango, C & Gomez-Mestre, I. (2024). Developmental plasticity to desiccation risk in tadpoles of a tropical inselberg specialist.
DATA AND FILE OVERVIEW
File list and description:
1.Delgadillo_et_al_Morphology_size_development_responses.xlsx: Desiccation risk responses in tadpoles of Leptodactylus lithonaetes: size, body mass, and development.
2.Delgadillo_et_al_locomotor_performance_responses.xlsx: Desiccation risk responses in tadpoles of Leptodactylus lithonaetes: locomotor performance.
Are there multiple versions of the dataset? No
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DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: 1.Delgadillo_et_al_Morphology_size_development_responses.xlsx
1. Number of variables: 12
2. Number of rows: 176
3. Variable list:
Id_Random: random identity assigned to each tadpole of the study species (Leptodactylus lithonaetes).
Treatment: water level treatment: HW: High water. DD: Drying treatment. LW: Low water treatment.
Clutch: the experiment was carried out with tadpoles of seven different clutches. Each clutch is identified with the letter C and a number from 1 to 7 (C1, C2, etc.)
Bucket: Each replicate consisted of a container with ten tadpoles. There were 21 buckets.
Total_length: The total length of each tadpole (mm).
Tail_length: The length of each tadpole tail (mm).
Head_length: The length of each tadpole head (mm).
Body_mass: The body mass of each tadpole (g).
Head_height: The height of each tadpole head (mm).
Tail_height: The height of each tadpole tail (mm).
Muscle_tail_perimeter: The total perimeter of the tail muscle of each tadpole (mm)
Gosner_stage: We used the Gosner staging table (Gosner 1960) to assign a developmental stage to each individual. Missing data with "NA" was assigned when we could not determine the Gosner stage.
4. Missing data codes: NA.
5. Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: None
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DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: 2.Delgadillo_et_al_Locomotor_performance_responses.xlsx
1. Number of variables: 7
2. Number of rows: 104
3. Variable list:
Id_Random: random identity assigned to each tadpole of the study species (Leptodactylus lithonaetes).
Treatment: water level treatment: HW: High water. DD: Drying treatment. LW: Low water treatment.
Clutch: the experiment was carried out with tadpoles of seven different clutches. Each clutch is identified with the letter C and a number from 1 to 7 (C1, C2, etc.)
Bucket: Each replicate consisted of a container with ten tadpoles. There were 21 buckets.
Temperature: The temperature at which each animal was exposed for the locomotor performance experiment (°C).
Max_acceleration: The maximum acceleration performance (m/s2), from the recorded tadpole movements with the software Tracker® (http://www.opensourcephysics.org, Open-Source Physics, Boston, MA, USA).
Body_size_pc: To reduce the dimensionality of the five morphological measures (database "Delgadillo_et_al_Morphology_size_development_responses," we used a principal component analysis using the Factominer package (Husson et al., 2016). Principal component 1 explained 82.90% of the total variation and positively correlated with all five variables, with correlation coefficients between 0.72 and 0.98. This PC1 was therefore interpreted as "body size." The analysis involved a Varimax rotation of the component that was retained to facilitate the interpretation. We included this PC1 "body size_pc" for analyses.
4. Missing data codes: None
5. Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: None
We collected seven foam nests of Leptodactylus lithonaetes in the rocky pools of the Bojonawi Nature Reserve (Puerto Carreño, Colombia). Two weeks after the first eggs were hatched, we placed ten tadpoles per clutch (Gosner stage between 25 and 30, Gosner, 1960) in 1.5 L containers. Each container was assigned to one of three experimental water level treatments: 1) high and constant water level, in which the water volume was always kept at 1 L; 2) low and constant water level, in which the water volume was always kept at 0.3 L, and 3) drying water treatment, in which the water volume was kept at 1 L for seven days, then lowered to 0.5 L, and seven days later lowered again to 0.3 L, then kept at that volume until the end of the experiment. The experiment lasted 21 days. Afterward, we weighed all tadpoles after gently blotting them dry to remove excess water. To determine Gosner's developmental stage (Gosner, 1960) and to take morphometric measurements, we also placed each tadpole in a photo booth with a millimetric scale to obtain lateral pictures with a video camera Nikon® Coolpix P600 without requiring anesthesia.
Size measurements: We obtained morphological measurements from the digital pictures of each tadpole using Image J (Schneider et al., 2012; v.1.52k; https://imagej.net/). We measured head length, tail length, head height, tail height, and tail muscle perimeter.
Aquatic locomotor performance tests: We conducted locomotor performance assays between 9:00 and 16:00. Each tadpole was evaluated for two minutes at a single temperature: 25, 30, 33, 37, or 40 °C. For the assay, each individual was placed in a round plastic aquarium 35 cm in diameter with a length scale at the bottom. To induce tadpoles to swim, we gently prodded them with a fine wire on the anterior part of the head. Every tadpole was filmed until it made at least five attempts to swim rapidly; in all cases, this occurred within the first minute. All trials were recorded from the top of the aquarium with a Nikon® Coolpix P600 video camera fixed to a supporting structure. We estimated the maximum acceleration performance tracking the recorded tadpole movements with the software Tracker® (http://www.opensourcephysics.org, Open-Source Physics, Boston, MA, USA). Then, the fastest sequence analyzed for each individual was used as a proxy for maximum performance.