What is it about?
For wildlife, staying connected across the landscape is essential for healthy populations, especially in places changed by human activity. In the case of the giant toad (Rhinella horribilis), vernal pools and moist conditions in the air and soil help individuals move more easily from place to place. On the other hand, fast-flowing rivers, very dense vegetation, and dry soils make it harder for toads to move.
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Photo by Ulrike Langner on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our findings are important because they help us understand how animals particularly vulnerable to environmental change, such as amphibians, can continue to live in these sites. Vernal pools play a fundamental role in maintaining the mobility of the giant toad. A large number of these scattered across the landscape serve as steps for the toads to move around. Additionally, they can serve as shelters and feeding and breeding sites. Similarly, we identified that aspects such as sites with low vegetation cover but high soil and air humidity are important for their movement. This set of environmental characteristics can be present in sites with moderate environmental human-modification, where we can find patches of vegetation close to each other capable of maintaining high levels of humidity. So the preservation of these characteristics across modified areas may be crucial for the stability of its populations. Unexpectedly and interestingly, these organisms can also facultatively move in sites with stressful climatic conditions, such as high solar radiation. This suggests that this species may be regulating its mobility according to available environmental conditions and that it may possess some adaptive mechanisms to cope with stressful conditions.
Perspectives
This study provides us with the opportunity to further investigate the effects of landscape modification on multiple amphibian species. A key aspect is analyzing other species with different life histories; it's the identification of key features of modified sites that are useful for a biological community. These would provide opportunities for developing management strategies from local to regional scales. Additionally, the capacity of the toad to tolerate stressful environmental conditions may suggest adaptation processes to such environments. This opens the possibility of exploring in the near future the genetic mechanisms that might be involved in its survival in these environments.
Gerardo Soria
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Functional connectivity patterns of the Giant Toad Rhinella horribilis in anthropogenically modified landscapes, PLOS One, October 2025, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0319111.
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