Toad Olympics are over (not postponed), diet data collected and tadpoles have metamorphosed

Max had been hard at work on his experiment and has collected vast amounts of data. It has been a lot of work for Max. Let's remember where he came from, months ago, toads were laying eggs. Guttural toads were caught in their native range, and invasive toads (from Cape Town) were moved back up to their native Durban to breed.

In this common garden experiment, all of the toads were kept and bred in the same conditions. Max's interest was in the tadpoles, their time to development, performance on the way and their change into metamorphs.

So it's been quite a journey.

Meanwhile...

Sam has been flushing guts galore and building lots of traps for catching invertebrates to see what's available for the toads to eat.

Lastly, James has been making those toads run, jump and climb.

Above (right) you can see a toad that has succesfully climbed out of it's confinement. Below, a toad in an experiment to measure exploration behaviour dares to leave its hideout and venture around the arena.

Published: Biological Invasions in South Africa

In what is actually a big event for the Centre for Invasion Biology, and invasion biologists all over South Africa, our book "Biological Invasions in South Africa" is published today! Moreover, it is Open Access and therefore free for anyone to download.

With 104 authors contributing to 31 chapters, there are nearly 1000 pages of text in this volume. The idea is that this book represents an encyclopaedic approach to covering all aspects of invasions in South Africa.

I wrote 2 chapters in the book that cover the invasive vertebrates in South Africa, as well as the invasive animals that have been donated from South Africa to the rest of the world. I also contributed to seven more chapters that cover many different aspects of invasions. Below you'll find the citations to my chapters, but I recommend downloading the entire book and looking through it all.

Byrne MJ et al. (2020) Education, training and capacity building in the field of biological invasions in South Africa. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer, Berlin, pp 731-755. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_25 Davies SJ et al. (2020) Experience and lessons from invasive and alien animal control projects carried out in South Africa. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer, Berlin, pp 629-663. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_22 Measey J, Hui C, Somers M (2020) Terrestrial vertebrate invasions in South Africa. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer, Berlin, pp 115-151. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_5 Measey J, Robinson TB, Kruger N, Zengeya TA, Hurley BP (2020) South Africa as a donor of alien animals to other parts of the world. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer, Berlin, pp 787-830. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_27 Potgieter LJ et al. (2020) Biological invasions in South Africa’s urban ecosystems: Patterns, processes, impacts and management. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer, Berlin, pp 275-309. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_11 Richardson DM, Abrahams B, Boshoff N, Davies SJ, Measey J, van Wilgen B (2020) South Africa’s Centre for Invasion Biology: An Experiment in Invasion Science for Society. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological Invasions in South Africa pp 879-914 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_30 van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, Zengeya T (2020) Overview of biological invasions in South Africa. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer, Berlin pp 3-31. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_1 Wilson JR et al. (2020) The role of environmental factors in promoting and limiting biological invasions in South Africa. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer, Berlin pp 355-385. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_13 Wilson JR, Measey J, Richardson DM, van Wilgen BW, Zengeya TA (2020) Potential futures of biological invasions in South Africa. In: van Wilgen BW, Measey J, Richardson DM, Wilson JR, van Wilgen BW (eds) Biological invasions in South Africa. Springer,  Berlin pp 917-946 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3_31

Agamas Run Again

Keen readers of this blog will remember that in January 2017, the MeaseyLab retreat in KZN included doing lots of fieldwork with Nick Tan (see here if your memory needs a jog). Nick finished his MSc in July 2017 (see blog post here). But happily, the story didn't end there, and Nick has continued to write up his project so that two publications were accepted in January 2020. Well done Nick!

Here's a video showing how Nick did the performance work. To see more videos, subscribe to our channel.

But actually, the Agama work didn't start there. It started long before when Anthony Herrel and Bieke Vanhooydonck first visited South Africa in 2008 (long before the blog started). 

Here's a blast from that 2008 past and a look at one of the Agama atra heads that we measured. Although we measured a bunch of species back then, we missed some really important ones that Nick was able to include and write up for us.

It's great to see this 'old' data getting written up and published. 

You can read the papers here:

Tan, W.C., Vanhooydonck, B., Measey, J. & Herrel, A. (in press) Morphology, locomotor performance, and habitat use in southern African agamids Biological Journal of the Linnnean Society https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blaa024 PDF

Tan, W.C., Herrel, A. & Measey, J. (in press) Dietary observations of four southern African lizards (Agamidae). Herpetological Conservation and Biology

Natasha's PhD defense in Lyon

The defense of a PhD has different sets of rules in different countries. Usually, you become familiar with the rules in your own country because you've seen plenty of people conduct defenses before in your own department. However, Natasha had a co-tutelle agreement with Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, and the co-tutelle agreement specified that she had to conduct her defense in Lyon, France (even though she'd never been there!).

This led to a a whole chain of events with a lot of travel for her defense jury (although Rui Rebelo was stopped from coming from Portugal by his university in case he caught a virus).

Natasha might have hoped that the most difficult part of her defense was going to be pronouncing the title in French...

The jury convened at 14h30 to listen to Natasha give her talk. She was then grilled with questions for around 1.5 hours by members of the jury who wanted to know more details of her study. It's not easy to become a dr. 

Finally, Natasha heard the words: "Congratulations - you're a doctor!"

Natasha will also graduate from Stellenbosch University in December, so watch this space to see pictures from that event.

The Guttural Toad Team are working hard

There are now three projects ongoing in Durban, and the MeaseyLab are going hard at it.

1. Max's experiment has lots of tadpoles to test.

You may remember that Max headed up to Durban at the end of 2019 in order to conduct an experiment on the tadpoles of Guttural toads (if not - see here). Since then, Max has caught a bunch of toads, persuaded them to breed and is now working with the tadpoles.

When he's not working with the tadpoles, you might find him taking a quick bath.

2. Stomach contents of Guttural toads

Sam has also got off to a great start finding lots of urban and rural toads for his project on their stomach contents. Getting to grip with flushing stomachs has not been a problem for Sam who has quickly become an expert.

3. James gets serious about hopping to it

James has also been collecting toads to add to his performance and behavioural trait datasets. 

Luckily, there's still lots of toads around in Durban, as long as it rains, so James has his hands full.

We're really proud of our #ToadTeam - so pleased that you are all getting great data.