Antipredator Skin Secretions of the Long-toed Salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum) in Its Northern Range
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Distasteful, noxious, and toxic secretions from skin glands have been demonstrated to play important antipredatory roles in amphibians. Previous studies suggest that the Long-toed Salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum), a widely distributed urodele found near the northern limit of its range in northern British Columbia, is distasteful to predators. The source of this distastefulness has not been exclusively identified. Our objectives were to isolate the skin secretions of the Long-toed Salamander through electrical stimulation of its granular glands and bioassay this secretion for antipredatory effects with crayfish. Previous studies suggested that proteins play an important role in these secretions; therefore, we tested for their presence and utility. The feeding response of crayfish to control food pellets was compared to pellets incorporating raw salamander skin secretions and to pellets incorporating boiled secretions. Significantly more crayfish consumed the control pellets than the raw skin secretion pellets, indicating unpalatability of these skin secretions. Thus, skin secretions appear to have an important antipredatory function. Skin secretions tested positive for presence of proteins, but the feeding response of crayfish to raw and boiled secretions was not significantly different, indicating that proteins were either only partially denatured by boiling, or are not exclusively responsible for the antipredatory nature of the secretions. A very low concentration of secretion was required to illicit a significant antifeedant response in crayfish, and we discuss the possible implications of this in relation to a proposed dual function of the Long-toed Salamander's granular glands in nutrient storage and the energetic requirements of an amphibian in its northern range.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".