Movement ecology of amphibians: A missing component for understanding population declines

Abstract

Movement is a fundamental process of all organisms that has strong consequences for individual fitness, gene flow, natural selection, adaptation, population persistence, metapopulation dynamics, and species distributions. Yet, a lack of understanding about how different organisms move in relation to landscape structure and resource availability may prevent full understanding of species declines and extinctions. In this perspective, we introduce the concept of movement ecology for aquatic-breeding amphibians, summarize our knowledge on amphibian movement, identify critical gaps, and provide a context for how understanding movement will help develop solutions for more effective amphibian conservation. Juvenile amphibian movement is a multi-phase process during which individuals adjust movement speed, responsiveness to habitat features, and propensity of settling based on internal state and the external environment. Our review enables future studies to place amphibian movement data into a larger explanatory context and could help guide new avenues of research. Understanding juvenile responses to habitat features during dispersal will aid in developing realistic, predictive models of amphibian movement that could be used to further conservation and management efforts such as mitigation and restoration, and will also add to theory about how movement mechanisms during dispersal impact population persistence in altered landscapes.