USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

Successful predation of invasive south american cane toads (rhinella marina) by southern watersnakes (nerodia fasciata)

SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

J. Sean Doody

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

ISSN

2333-0694

Abstract

South American Cane Toads (Rhinella marina) have been introduced into several regions outside of their native distribution. Outside of their native range, few predators have been documented preying upon R.marina due to their potent toxins secreted in defense. However, prevalence of a toxin resistance gene makes it possible for some snakes of the sub-family Natricinae to consume native toads. We documented successful consumption of the invasive cane toad by the Southern Watersnake (Nerodiafasciata) in southwest Florida, both in the wild and in the laboratory. Southern Watersnakes from populations that existed both with and without cane toads successfully consumed toad prey without obvious ill-effect. Southern Watersnakes in southwest Florida are thus resistant to, and readily consume cane toads, an otherwise relatively predator-free invasive species in Florida. More dietary field data and controlled experiments that measure resistance to multiple prey items, sizes, and fre-quency will serve to determine the extent to which Southern Watersnakes can impact the size and structure of sympatric populations of cane toads.

Language

en_US

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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