The Effects of Refugia on Bufo variabilis Survival Across Developmental Stages 26-30 in the Presence of Invasive Species Gambusia affinis

Inroduction & Objective: The global assessment of animals provides amphibians are more threatened and declining more rapidly than either birds or mammals. The presence of alien or exotic species is an important factor in the decline or extinction of amphibian populations, which contribute to the decline of the amphibian population by hunting eggs and larvae. Also, it has been recognized in previous researches that refugia can be an effective way to protect amphibians against invasive species, including Mosquitofish. In this study, in order to investigate the effect of refugia on the survival of Bufovariabilis in the presence of Gambusiaaffinis, the independent and interactive effects of two factors of refugia type (including three treatments of absent, simple and complex refugia) and predator density (including three treatments of non-predator, one and three predators) carried out within 10 days. In this study, the highest survival rate was observed in the complexrefugia / non-predator with 96.66% ±17.10, and the lowest survival rate was observed in the absence of refugia / three predators (0%). In general,the results of ANOVA showed both predator density and refugia type had a significant effect on survival, but their interactive effect is not significant.Considering the effect of time, predator density independently showed a significant effect on the survival rate, but this effect is not significant for the type of refugiaand its interactive effect with predator density over time. The number of Green toad in the test environment, with suitable refugia, greatly decreases with increasing predator density.