The Effect of Time Spent in the Lab on the Behavioral Flexibility of Blanchard’s Cricket Frogs

Abstract

To gain knowledge about animals and repopulate declining species, researchers often conduct husbandry programs that involve housing wild-caught animals in laboratories. Housing animals in labs for long periods may affect their behavioral flexibility, or their ability to change their behavior to adapt to changes in their environment. We measured and compared the behavioral flexibilities of wild-caught Blanchard’s cricket frogs, or Acris blanchardi, which spent a long time (40 days) and a short time in the lab (13 days). To measure behavioral flexibility, we taught frogs to go to one end of a two-arm maze. Once the frogs learned this, we switched which door was correct and measured how quickly the frogs could learn to go to the newly correct door in a process called serial reversal learning. We switched which door was correct three times. We found that frogs that spent more time in the lab before testing were better at learning the maze and showed some evidence of behavioral flexibility. Frogs that spent little time in the lab showed no evidence of behavioral flexibility. Frogs that spent more time in the lab before testing may have been more habituated to lab conditions and thus less stressed when placed in the maze. Keeping wild-caught frogs in the lab for a longer time before release may increase their chances of survival upon reintroduction to the wild, since they will have enough time to overcome the initial stress of being in a new environment and have better behavioral flexibility when released.