DOI: 10.5061/dryad.msbcc2gb7
title: Data from: Poison frogs rely on vision for homing in natural environments

description: Neotropical poison frogs (Dendrobatoidea) can navigate back to their
 territories after large passive displacements. However, the underlying
 sensory mechanisms remain largely unknown. Dendrobatoids use simple visual
 stimuli for navigation in confined laboratory experiments, but larger
 movements under natural conditions are likely to be more challenging.
 Tropical forests have dense vegetation that creates cluttered and
 confusing visual environments. Here, we investigated visual cues and
 navigation of territory-holding male strawberry poison frogs (Oophaga
 pumilio) in tropical forests. First, we displaced frogs and blocked
 different aspects of their visual surroundings at the release site. To
 orient successfully, frogs required information from the lower half of the
 visual field, but not from the sky or canopy. Second, we displaced males
 in forested or open areas and characterized their homing trajectories
 according to visual information using 360° photos. Homing success was
 higher and faster in open areas, where frogs also showed better initial
 orientations and lower meandering. We show that low-level visual panoramas
 in open areas contain more directional information than in closed forests,
 which could explain these navigational differences. Our results shed light
 on the mechanisms by which frogs navigate natural environments.
description: # Data from: Poison frogs rely on vision for homing in natural
 environments Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.msbcc2gb7](10.5061/dryad.msbcc2gb7) ## Description of the
 data and file structure This study investigates the use of visual cues for
 navigation of territory-holding male strawberry poison frogs (*Oophaga
 pumilio*) in tropical forests and quantifies the orientation behavior and
 homing trajectories according to visual information. Experiment 1:  To
 determine whether male *O. pumilio* use certain components of the visual,
 we displaced males 8 m away from their territory and experimentally
 manipulated visual information. Each frog experienced one of four possible
 experimental conditions that differed in the visual information available
 at the release site (covered sky and canopy, covered panorama, all-covered
 and control .  Experiment 2:  We investigated whether homing performance
 differs between sites with different visual complexity (Forest or Open
 areas). We displaced males 8 m away from their territory and recorded the
 homing trajectory of the frog, an quantified homing performance. We
 quantified the visual information available to *O. pumilio* at the release
 sites using 360° photos.  ### Files and variables **File:
 DataAnalysis_VisualNavigation.Rmd: Rmarkdown with all the necessary code
 to analyze the data in the csv files attached** #### File: Exp1_final.csv:
 Data for experiment 1 (E1) #### File: Exp2_final.csv: Data for experiment
 2 (E1) ##### Variables Some variable names and descriptions are shared
 between both data files (Exp1_final.csv and Exp2_final.csv). Each variable
 indicates in parentheses in which experiment it was used (E1, E2, or
 both). * **ind (E1, E2)**: ID of individual used in the experiment.
 Different frogs were used for each experiment. * **site (E1, E2)**: Site
 where the experiment was performed (Open Areas/Forest) * **latency
 (seconds) (E1, E2)**: Latency to departure: the time between the beginning
 of the trial and the moment when the frog exited the goniometer *
 **initial_orientation (degrees) (E1, E2)**: The angle section on the
 goniometer within which the frog exited the wooden disk * **ang_error
 (degrees) (E1, E2)**: Angular error of the initial orientation: the
 angular difference between the frog’s initial orientation and the true
 territory direction. A value ranging between 0 and 180 degrees. For this
 calculation, we first subtracted 180 from the actual angle representing
 the actual territory direction. Then we took the absolute value of the
 previous result, subtracted 180 again and finally took the absolute value
 as the angular error value. * **condition (E1)**: The experimental
 conditions in experiment 1 that differed in the visual information
 available at the release site (Sky-Canopy covered/covered panorama/all
 covered/control) * **date (E2)**: Date of the trial (M/D/Y) * **desp
 (E2)**: Direction in which the frog was displaced from its territory *
 **succes_task (E2)**: Indicates whether the frog successfully returned to
 its territory after displacement. We defined a successful homing event as
 a 75% progression along the total length of the displacement route (i.e.,
 arrival within 1.5 m of the original calling perch). (Y/N) * **group
 (E2)**: Combination of success task and site (successful
 forest/unsuccessful forest/successful open areas) * **rot_info (E2)**:
 Rotational image difference function (rIDF): the average difference
 (absolute pixel difference) between the 360° image and itself across all
 possible orientations of the image along the azimuth (360 increments of 1
 degree). This results in a curve of image difference across azimuths
 characterized by a minimum when both images’ orientation match * **depth
 (E2)**: The depth of the valley around the minimum of the curve of the
 rIDF * **width (E2)**: The width of the valley around the minimum of the
 curve of the rIDF * **sky_ratio (E2)**: The ratio of sky/terrestrial
 pixels in the 360° visual field * **path_length (E2)**: The total distance
 traveled by the frog from the displacement site to its territory. Only for
 successful males (meters) * **meander (E2)**: Local meander index:
 measures the average directional angle between consecutive segments *
 **straightness (E2)**: Overall straightness index: corresponds to the
 length of the mean resultant vector of the distribution of segment
 direction * **total_time (seconds) (E2)**: The time taken for successful
 homing ## Code/software The data were analyzed using R. The Rmarkdown file
 "DataAnalysis_VisualNavigation.Rmd" contains all the necessary
 code to replicate the results of the study, including loading the tabular
 data sets (Exp1_final.csv and Exp2_final.csv), performing data
 manipulations, creating subsets for analysis and running all the models.
 ## Access information