Spinal arthritis in cane toads

We collected individual toads from the campus of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia (-19.3329°S 146.7575oE) over five years and additional toads from locations in the Northern Territory, and Western and Southern Queensland and New South Wales in 2010 and 2011. Toads were captured by visual encounter and hand collection at night, or in traps. They were euthanised by an overdose of buffered MS222, and preserved by freezing before dissection. During dissection, we used Vernier callipers to measure body size (snout-urostyle length) and the length and width of any obvious (>5.5 mm growth) spinal abnormality (which typically presented as bulbous growths around the vertebrae) to the nearest 0.1 mm. We determined sex by direct examination of the gonads. Research was approved by James Cook University’s animal ethics committee (A1617) and all methods were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.

    Data Record Details
    Data record related to this publication Spinal arthritis in cane toads
    Data Publication title Spinal arthritis in cane toads
  • Description

    We collected individual toads from the campus of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia (-19.3329°S 146.7575oE) over five years and additional toads from locations in the Northern Territory, and Western and Southern Queensland and New South Wales in 2010 and 2011. Toads were captured by visual encounter and hand collection at night, or in traps. They were euthanised by an overdose of buffered MS222, and preserved by freezing before dissection. During dissection, we used Vernier callipers to measure body size (snout-urostyle length) and the length and width of any obvious (>5.5 mm growth) spinal abnormality (which typically presented as bulbous growths around the vertebrae) to the nearest 0.1 mm. We determined sex by direct examination of the gonads. Research was approved by James Cook University’s animal ethics committee (A1617) and all methods were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.

  • Other Descriptors
    • Descriptor

      This dataset is available as a spreadsheet in MS Excel (.xls) and Open Document formats (.ods)

    • Descriptor type Brief
  • Data type dataset
  • Keywords
    • toad
    • cane toad
    • spinal
    • arthritis
  • Funding source
  • Research grant(s)/Scheme name(s)
  • Research themes
    Tropical Ecosystems, Conservation and Climate Change
    Tropical Health, Medicine and Biosecurity
    FoR Codes (*)
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    Temporal (time) coverage
  • Start Date
  • End Date
  • Time Period
    Spatial (location) coverage
  • Locations
    • Australia
    Data Locations

    Type Location Notes
    Attachment Edited_SA_data.xls MS Excel (.xls) format
    Attachment Edited_SA_data.ods Open Document (.ods) format
    The Data Manager is:
    College or Centre
    Access conditions Open: free access under license
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  • Related publications
      Name Bower, Deborah S., Yasumiba, Kiyomi, Trumbo, Daryl R., Alford, Ross A., and Schwarzkopf, Lin (2018) Spinal arthritis in cane toads across the Australian landscape. Scientific Reports, 8.
    • URL http://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30099-0
    • Notes Open Access
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    Citation Schwarzkopf, Linda (2018): Spinal arthritis in cane toads. James Cook University. https://doi.org/10.25903/5b70bc6064298