Robert Kaplan, Reed College Bio Department Robert H. Kaplan Biology Building, room B225 tel. For the past 12 years my laboratory has focused on the ecology, genetics, and development of the Asian fire-bellied toad, Bombina orientalis . In addition, these properties make it a fine research organism in an undergraduate environment. Much data has accumulated in recent years that shows that differences in maternal investment can ramify throughout larval life. The overall goal of this research is to gain a better understanding of how an embryo is able to compensate for environmental uncertainty given that its mother was subjected to a variety of uncertain environmental influences at the time when eggs were forming in her body.
Performance is an important link between morphology and fitness.
For this reason, studies of the causes and consequences of performance variability can provide us with a fuller understanding of natural selection and adaptation. This unique phenomenon was mediated by naturally occurring temperature variation that influenced growth and developmental rates of embryos. This rate variation interacted with ovum size variation to result in larvae at hatching with body proportions that varied, so that embryos that developed from large eggs in warm environments had decreased tail lengths and were more susceptible to predation. This led to the hypothesis that locomotor ability was compromised. The field study was followed up by a laboratory study that approximated the limits of field conditions and looked at the effects of development and maternal effects on locomotor performance.