An analysis of the effects of prior drying and vertebrate colonization on ecological functioning and vertebrate fitness

We investigated the legacy effects of drying and refilling of wetlands via mesocosms on growth and survival of recolonizing aquatic vertebrates and their subsequent effects on ecological function. Specifically, we tested the effects of prior drying on anuran and fish growth and survival (using Gompertz growth curves), and joint effects of vertebrates and drying on periphyton biomass, and whole-system gross primary productivity. Using 64 1,000-L hard plastic cattle tanks to create replicate aquatic mesocosms, four trophic treatments (no vertebrate control, larval anurans, fish, larval anurans and fish) were crossed with two drying treatments (undried and dried-refilled) to simulate different outcomes of colonization by two common vertebrate guilds and drying/refilling cycles. Mesocosms with anuran treatments received 50 Lithobates blairi tadpoles (1,600 total) and mesocosms with fish treatments received one Lepomis cyanellus juvenile (32 total). We recorded anuran growth rates, survival,..., All data were collected in the field at the location of the experimental study. All field data were entered into Excel sheet format and subsequently analyzed via the R Studio software program. The only modification to the collected data is the following: data from tank #1 were omitted from periphyton and gross primary productivity analyses due to a separate amphibian species ovipositing within that tank. , All statistical analyses were performed in RStudio version 4.1.1 (R Core Team, 2021). All packages required for the statistical analyses within the R program are listed at the top of each R script file. All files submitted are either .xslx or .Rmd file types and both Microsoft Excel and R Studio will be required to open the data files.