Final answer:
The success of cane toads in Australia can be attributed to their chemical defenses, high fecundity, and strategy of larger, non-reproducing toads at the invasion front focusing on dispersal.
Step-by-step explanation:
Several factors contribute to the success of cane toads in Australia. First, their powerful chemical defenses provide a significant survival advantage. The toads secrete toxins that can be fatal to naive predators, ensuring adult toads often evade local predation. Secondly, cane toads' fecundity plays a crucial role; their ability to lay thousands of eggs means that even with predator presence, many offspring survive, leading to rapid population growth. Lastly, the cane toads at the invasion front exhibit higher prey availability, as they mostly move as large individuals that don't reproduce immediately, devoting energy to dispersal. This strategy increases their ability to colonize new areas effectively.
Cane toads in Australia have been successful due to several factors:
Lack of natural predators: When cane toads first arrived in a new area, native predators were not familiar with their poisonous nature. This led to many naive predators attempting to eat the toads and getting fatally poisoned.
Spacial sorting for dispersal: The lack of reproduction in the cane toads at the front of the invasion wave is thought to be a result of dispersal-enhancing genes. These toads forego reproduction and focus on dispersal, allowing them to maintain their dominance at the front of the invasion.
High fecundity: Cane toads have the ability to reproduce in large numbers, which allows them to rapidly establish and spread in new areas, outcompeting native species for resources.