Trophic Ecology of Endangered Gold-Spotted Pond Frog in Ecological Wetland Park and Rice Paddy Habitats

Autor: Kyung-Hoon Shin, Kwang-Hyeon Chang, Jong-Mo Suh, Mei-Yan Jin, Hye-Ji Oh, Min-Ho Chang, Su-Gon Park, Ju-Duk Yoon
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Animals : an Open Access Journal from MDPI
Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
instname
Animals, Vol 11, Iss 967, p 967 (2021)
Animals
Volume 11
Issue 4
ISSN: 2076-2615
Popis: Este artículo contiene 16 páginas, 6 figuras, 1 tablas.
The gold-spotted pond frog (Pelophylax chosenicus) is an endangered amphibian species in South Korea. In order to obtain ecological information regarding the gold-spotted pond frog’s habitat environment and biological interactions, we applied stable isotope analysis to quantify the ecological niche space (ENS) of frogs including black-spotted pond frogs (P. nigromaculatus) and bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) within the food web of two different habitats—an ecological wetland park and a rice paddy. The gold-spotted pond frog population exhibited a broader ENS in the ecological wetland park than in the rice paddy. According to the carbon stable isotope ratios, gold-spotted pond frogs mainly fed on insects, regardless of habitat type. However, the results comparing the range of both carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes showed that gold-spotted pond frogs living in the rice paddy showed limited feeding behavior, while those living in the ecological wetland park fed on various food sources located in more varied trophic positions. Although the ENS of the gold-spotted pond frog was generally less likely to be overlapped by that of other frog species, it was predicted to overlap with a high probability of 87.3% in the ecological wetland park. Nevertheless, gold-spotted pond frogs in the ecological wetland park were not significantly affected by the prey competition with competitive species by feeding on other prey for which other species’ preference was low. Since these results show that a habitats’ food diversity has an effect on securing the ENS of gold-spotted pond frogs and prey competition, we recommend that the establishment of a food environment that considers the feeding behavior of gold-spotted pond frogs is important for the sustainable preservation of gold-spotted pond frogs and their settlement in alternative habitats.
This research was funded by the National Institute of Ecology, Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea, grant number NIE-C-2018-04.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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