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Oct

16

2007
 
 

Walking canes



Surging invasive toads have evolved themselves into an artritis-prone dilemma

old, grey but still toxicThought cane toads Chaunus [Bufo] marinus were invincible? Think again — they’ve got bad backs, according to findings published this week in PNAS. Since their introduction to Australia they’ve chomped through, and hopped across, more than a million square kilometers of native wildlife. Along the way they’ve evolved longer legs and larger bodies, helping those at the invasion front to cover more territory than their already-settled counterparts. But those evolutionary tweaks have come at a price: the largest, leggiest toads are also prone to spinal arthritis. University of Sydney biologist Rick Shine and colleagues found that living on the edge is tough for cane toads, with the trade-off between growth and immunity balanced on a knife’e edge. Investing energy in being big — and mobile — leaves the door open to artritis-inducing infectious bacteria. As one successful invasive species could have told another, nothing in life comes easy. Source: Brown GP, Shilton C, Phillips BL & Shine R (2007) Invader under stress: spinal arthritis in invasive cane toads. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0705057104

Related stories in Conservation magazine: Evolutionary Tinkering

Image © Eric Delmar

Filed Under Habitat, Invasive species, Monitoring, Socio-political issues | 

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