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Biology of Amphibians
01 Jan 1986-
TL;DR: The world of amphibians has a rich evolutionary history and the potential for the future of the amphibian species as mentioned in this paper, which includes reproductive strategies, reproductive cycles, reproductive mode, quantitative aspects, parental care, evolution of reproductive strategies courtship and mating - location of breeding site, secondary sexual characters, courtship behaviour, fertilization and oviposition, sexual selection, sexual evolution of mating systems vocalization - anuran communication system, mechanisms of sound production and reception, kinds of vocalizations and their functions, abiotic factors affecting vocalization, phylogenetic implications of vocalization eggs
Abstract: Introduction to amphibia - the world of amphibians, historical resume, prospects for the future. Part 1 Life History: reproductive strategies - reproductive cycles, reproductive mode, quantitative aspects, parental care, evolution of reproductive strategies courtship and mating - location of breeding site, secondary sexual characters, courtship behaviour, fertilization and oviposition, sexual selection, evolution of mating systems vocalization - anuran communication system, mechanisms of sound production and reception, kinds of vocalizations and their functions, abiotic factors affecting vocalization, interspecific significance of vocalization, phylogenetic implications of vocalization eggs and development - spermatozoa and fertilization, egg structure, egg development, hatching and birth, development and amphibian diversity larvae - morphology of larvae, adaptive types of larvae, physiology and ecology, social behaviour, evolutionary significance of larvae metamorphosis - endocrine control, other biochemical changes, morphological changes, neoteny, ecological and evolutionary significance of metamorphosis. Part 2 Ecology: relationships with the environment - water economy, temperature, gas exchange, energy metabolism and energy budgets, ecological synthesis food and feeding - prey selection, location of prey, capture of prey, evolution of prey-capturing mechanisms and strategies enemies and defence - diseases, parasites, predators, anti-predator mechanisms, evolution of defence mechanisms population biology - characteristics of individuals, movements and territoriality, demography, factors regulating populations community ecology and species diversity - community structure, species diversity, evolution of amphibian communities. Part 3 Morphology: musculoskeletal system - skull and hyobranchium, axial system, appendicular system, integration of functional units integumentary, sensory and visceral systems - integument, sensory receptor systems, nervous system, circulatory and respiratory systems, urogenital system, digestive system, endocrine glands, evolutionary considerations. Part 4 Evolution: origin and early evolution - nature of a tetrapod, primitive tetrapods, tetrapod affinities (lungfishes or lobe-fins?), diversity and evolution of early tetrapods, status of the lissamphibia cytogenetic, molecular and genomic evolution - cytogenetics, molecular evolution, genomic evolution phylogeny - caudata, gymnophiona, anura biogeography - biogeographic principles, historical setting, lissamphibia, caudata, gymnophiona, anura classification.
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TL;DR: This study provides further evidence that the supermatrix approach provides an effective strategy for inferring large-scale phylogenies using the combined results of previous studies, despite many taxa having extensive missing data.
1,262 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that most amphibian populations should decrease more often than they increase, due to highly variable recruitment and less variable adult mortality.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Declines and losses of amphibian populations are a global problem with complex local causes. These may include ultraviolet radiation, predation, habitat modification, environmental acidity and toxicants, diseases, changes in climate or weather patterns, and interactions among these factors. Understanding the extent of the problem and its nature requires an understanding of how local factors affect the dynamics of local populations. Hypotheses about population behavior must be tested against appropriate null hypotheses. We generated null hypotheses for the behavior of amphibian populations using a model, and we used them to test hypotheses about the behavior of 85 time series taken from the literature. Our results suggest that most amphibian populations should decrease more often than they increase, due to highly variable recruitment and less variable adult mortality. During the period covered by our data (1951–1997), more amphibian populations decreased than our model predicted. However, there ...
1,117 citations
TL;DR: The importance of the critical fossils seems to reside in their relative primitive‐ness, and the simplest explanation for their more conservative nature is that they have had less time to evolve.
974 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that many amphibian populations may be unable to recolonize areas after local extinction, due to the physiological constraints, relatively low mobility, and site fidelity of amphibians.
Abstract: Extinctions are normal biological phenomena Both mass extinctions in geological time and local extinc- tions in ecological time are well documented, but rates of extinction have increased in recentyears-especially in ver- tebrates, including amphibians-as illustrated by recent re- ports of their population declines and range reductions. We suggest that long-term population data are necessary for rig- orously evaluating the significance of the amphibian de- clines. Due to the physiological constraints, relatively low mobility, and site fidelity of amphibians, we suggest that many amphibian populations may be unable to recolonize areas after local extinction.
876 citations
TL;DR: Breeding patch isolation via limited dispersal and/or strong site fidelity was the most frequently implicated or tested metapopulation condition, however there is strong evidence that amphibian dispersal is not as uniformly limited as is often thought.
Abstract: Amphibians are frequently characterized as having limited dispersal abilities, strong site fidelity and spatially disjunct breeding habitat. As such, pond-breeding species are often alleged to form metapopulations. Amphibian species worldwide appear to be suffering population level declines caused, at least in part, by the degradation and fragmentation of habitat and the intervening areas between habitat patches. If the simplification of amphibians occupying metapopulations is accurate, then a regionally based conservation strategy, informed by metapopulation theory, is a powerful tool to estimate the isolation and extinction risk of ponds or populations. However, to date no attempt to assess the class-wide generalization of amphibian populations as metapopulations has been made. We reviewed the literature on amphibians as metapopulations (53 journal articles or theses) and amphibian dispersal (166 journal articles or theses for 53 anuran species and 37 salamander species) to evaluate whether the conditions for metapopulation structure had been tested, whether pond isolation was based only on the assumption of limited dispersal, and whether amphibian dispersal was uniformly limited. We found that in the majority of cases (74%) the assumptions of the metapopulation paradigm were not tested. Breeding patch isolation via limited dispersal and/or strong site fidelity was the most frequently implicated or tested metapopulation condition, however we found strong evidence that amphibian dispersal is not as uniformly limited as is often thought. The frequency distribution of maximum movements for anurans and salamanders was well described by an inverse power law. This relationship predicts that distances beneath 11–13 and 8–9 km, respectively, are in a range that they may receive one emigrating individual. Populations isolated by distances approaching this range are perhaps more likely to exhibit metapopulation structure than less isolated populations. Those studies that covered larger areas also tended to report longer maximum movement distances – a pattern with implications for the design of mark-recapture studies. Caution should be exercised in the application of the metapopulation approach to amphibian population conservation. Some amphibian populations are structured as metapopulations – but not all.
816 citations