Data from: Is the enhanced dispersal rate seen at invasion fronts a behaviourally plastic response to encountering novel ecological conditions?

As a population expands into novel areas (as occurs in biological invasions), the range edge becomes dominated by rapidly-dispersing individuals – thereby accelerating the rate of population spread. That acceleration has been attributed to evolutionary processes (natural selection and spatial sorting), to which we add a third complementary process: behavioural plasticity. Encountering environmental novelty may directly elicit an increased rate of dispersal. When we reciprocally translocated cane toads (Rhinella marina) among study sites in southern Australia, the transported animals massively increased dispersal rates relative to residents (to an extent similar to the evolved increase between range-core versus invasion-front toad populations in Australia). The responses of these translocated toads show that even range-core toads are capable of the long-distance dispersal rates of invasion-front conspecifics; and suggest that rapid dispersal (rather than evolving de novo) has simply been expanded from facultative to constitutive expression.当种群向全新区域扩张（正如生物入侵过程中所发生的那样），其分布范围边缘会被快速扩散的个体主导，进而显著加速种群整体的扩散速率。此前，这类扩散加速现象被归因于两类进化过程：自然选择与空间分选（spatial sorting），本研究在此新增第三种互补机制：行为可塑性。当个体遭遇环境新奇性时，可直接诱发扩散速率提升。我们在澳大利亚南部的多个研究样地之间对蔗蟾（*Rhinella marina*）开展了双向互换移植实验，结果显示移植个体的扩散速率相较本地个体大幅提升，其提升幅度与澳大利亚本土分布核心区种群与入侵前沿种群之间的演化差异相当。这些移植蔗蟾的响应表明，即便分布核心区的蔗蟾，也具备入侵前沿同种个体的长距离扩散能力；同时提示，快速扩散能力并非从头演化而来，而仅仅是从兼性表达拓展为组成型表达。