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. 2024 Mar 12;14(3):e11069.
doi: 10.1002/ece3.11069. eCollection 2024 Mar.

Freshwater salinization and the evolved tolerance of amphibians

Affiliations

Freshwater salinization and the evolved tolerance of amphibians

Rick Relyea et al. Ecol Evol. .

Abstract

The increasing salinization of freshwaters is a growing environmental issue as a result of mining, agriculture, climate change, and the application of de-icing salts in regions that experience ice and snow. Due to narrow osmotic limits, many freshwater species are particularly susceptible to salinization, but it is possible that repeated exposures over time could favor the evolution of increased salt tolerance. Using collected nine populations of larval wood frogs (Rana sylvatica) as eggs from ponds and wetlands with close proximity to roads and spanning a wide gradient of salt concentrations. In the first experiment, we used a time-to-death experiment to examine the salt tolerance. In a second experiment, we examined whether population differences in salt tolerance were associated with trade-offs in growth, development, or behavior in the presence of control water or a sublethal salt concentration. We found that populations collected from ponds with low and intermediate salt concentrations exhibited similar tolerance curves over a 96-h exposure. However, the population from a pond with the highest salt concentration exhibited a much higher tolerance. We also found population differences in growth, development, and activity level among the populations, but these were not associated with population differences in tolerance. In addition, the sublethal concentration of salt had no impact on growth and development, but it did cause a reduction in tadpole activity across the populations. Collectively, these results provide further evidence that some species of freshwater organisms can evolve tolerance to increasing salinization, although it may only occur under relatively high concentrations and without trade-offs in growth, development, or behavior.

Keywords: amphibian; evolution; microevolution; sensitivity; toxicology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Chloride concentrations at each of the nine sites at the time of wood frog egg collection. Sites are represented by unique three‐ or four‐letter codes.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The proportion of wood frogs alive from each of the nine populations used in the time‐to‐death experiment when exposed to 8 g/L of NaCl. Warmer colors indicate populations whose source pond had higher chloride concentrations and cooler colors indicate populations whose source pond had lower chloride concentrations. The asterisk indicates significantly different Kaplan–Meyer survival as calculated using log‐rank tests (see text). There were no deaths in the no‐salt controls, so the survival curves for the nine controls are not shown.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The (a) relative growth rate, (b) change in Gosner stage, and (c) activity of tadpoles for the nine wood frog populations in the presence and absence of a sublethal salt concentration. The populations are plotted in reference to the chloride concentration of their source ponds. Data points represent means ±1 SE.

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