Interesting New Article on BTS Habitat

[Chris.J]

Hey guys,

I found this article recently through Google News which I thought was extraordinary. Not sure if anyone has posted about it yet. I found it VERY informative on BTS (Northern and Centralian) habitat selection. The part about invasive species (Cane Toads) and their effect on BTS was interesting, but also tragic and sad.

http://www.animalbiotelemetry.com/content/1/1/7

Chris
Massachusetts

[Richard.C]

interesting article

interesting points how they have heat year round,and being so hot they spend a lot of time trying to avoid it

that's why big temp gradients are important in captivity,even for tropical species,as in nature they do seek out cooler temps,in captivity how can they when kept so hot

even tropical ones benefit from big gradients

one thing that bothers me with these studies though is the method of study,attatching gps tracker back packs to them and chasing them around recapturing them,and classing there behaviour as 100 percent normal wild behaviour ,surely the stress of that modifies there behaviour,first there origionally captured,messed with,then released with a chunky backpack glued to them,probably staying low for a bit,but then everywhere they go they keep being unearthed by people

I guess most do the samething but is it really 100 percent what they would be doing if they weren't donned with a gps backpack and chased around from one place they thought was a safe place to another

[Lea]

I agree with that, Richard, I'm not sure they are accurate, but definitely interesting to see as close to normal as we can get. I read an article recently about whether mothers recognise their offspring. They put the offspring in a clean bag, with the mother outside the bag, but enclosed in a sterile tank. They measured the recognition in various ways, movement inside the tank, tongue flicks and/ or the amount of nonchalance or inactivity over a given period. It was repeated with about 20 mothers and their own, as well as unknown offspring to them. They removed mothers from the study that attacked the bags! Obviously, it was a controlled experiment, being that bag attacks excluded females from the study, but wouldn't that be a reaction or behaviour towards the bag containing their young?

Funny how much people can manipulate the outcome, yet still have the data collected as viable material to portray "natural" behaviours