Morphology and vocalization comparison of the Houston Toad and the Dwarf American Toad: implications for their historic range

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Paleontology and Evolutionary Science

Main article text

 

Introduction

Materials & Methods

Morphometric comparison

Advertisement call comparison

Unresolved museum records

Results

Discussion

Conclusions

Supplemental Information

R code

Script and analysis and figure preparation for both our morphological study and advertisement call comparison

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.17635/supp-1

Advertisement Call Dataset

Acoustic characteristics measured for the Houston Toad and Dwarf American Toad using software Raven.

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.17635/supp-2

Toad Morphology dataset

Measurements of eight morphological characteristics.

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.17635/supp-3

Additional Information and Declarations

Competing Interests

Andrew R. MacLaren is employed by Cambrian Environmental.

Author Contributions

Andrew R. MacLaren conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Toby J. Hibbitts conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Michael R.J. Forstner conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Shawn F. McCracken conceived and designed the experiments, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Animal Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

As instructed by the Publishing Editor, here is language regarding our use of passive recording equipment:

Passive recordings were collected with permission from landowners, but did not require any formal permitting from state, federal, or local authorities, and we did not capture any incidental recordings of non-participating human subjects that may have been unaware of the presence of our recording devices.

These statements have been included in our updated manuscript.

Field Study Permissions

The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

Access to field sites in Robertson County, Texas, were granted by Laredo Petroleum to Michael R.J. Forstner. Access to field sites (the Griffith League Ranch) in Bastrop County Texas was granted by the Boy Scouts of America Capitol Area Council to Michael R.J. Forstner. Audio Recordings made by C. McAllister in Oklahoma occurred on public property.

No protected areas were accessed during this study, and we do ask that exact locations not be provided to readers for the purpose of protecting sensitive populations.

Data Availability

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

The raw morphological data and the raw audio characteristic data are available in the Supplemental Files.

The audio is also available at Zenodo: MacLaren, A. (2024). Houston Toad and Dwarf American Toad Supplemental Audio. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11107152.

Funding

The authors received no funding for this work.

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