Toad Locomotor Performance

Raw class data between scaling variables and maximum jumping performance were recorded in Table 1. These combined results were then studied using both the regression and correlation analysis methods to predict which morphological traits (body size, mass, muscle length and muscle circumference) determined the source of variation in toad locomotor performance; with the longest jump distance of the toads as the dependent variables and the various scaling variables as the independent variables. Then the p value will be evaluated in order to determine whether the correlation between the variables are significant and we can falsify the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis that there is a relationship between the body structure and jumping performances of the toads.
Toad Gender Mass (g) Body size (mm) Muscle length (mm) Muscle circumference(mm) Max. Jump (mm)
1 M 19 67 20 20 250
2 M 21.5 69 21 20 390
3 M 25.5 59 25 29 290
4 M 34.4 91 26 20 450
5 M 20.6 68 23 20 430
6 F 25.2 68 21 15 370
7 F 33.5 65 28 21 300
8 F 14.9 51 20 20 400 …show more content…
This slightly large r value indicates that there was a moderate positive relationship between the jumping ability and body size in these toads. In other words, according to the least-squares regression equation in Figure 1a, for each additional 1 mm of body size, the maximum jumping distance was predicted to increase by approximately 2.5842 mm. Despite having these results, the p-values for the correlation between jumping performance and body size are greater than 0.05 (Fig. 1a), which indicated that the correlation coefficient were not significant and occurred due to