Informed breeding dispersal following stochastic changes to patch quality in a pond-breeding amphibian

1. The unidirectional movement of animals between breeding patches (i.e., breeding dispersal) has profound implications for the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of spatially structured populations. In spatiotemporally variable environments, individuals are expected to adjust their dispersal decisions according to information gathered on the environmental and/or social cues that reflect the fitness prospects in a given breeding patch (i.e., informed dispersal).

2. A paucity of empirical work limits our understanding of the ability of animals to depart from low quality breeding patches and settle in high quality breeding patches. We examined the capacity of individuals to respond to stochastic changes in habitat quality via informed breeding dispersal in a pond-breeding amphibian.

3. We conducted a five-year (2015–2019) capture-recapture study of boreal toads Anaxyrus boreas boreas (n = 1100) that breed in beaver ponds in western Wyoming, USA. During early spring of 2017, an ext...