24 research outputs found
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The bii4africa dataset of faunal and floral population intactness estimates across Africa’s major land uses
Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of an ‘intact’ reference population of a species group in a particular land use, on a scale from 0 (no remaining individuals) to 1 (same abundance as the reference) and, in rare cases, to 2 (populations that thrive in human-modified landscapes). The resulting bii4africa dataset contains intactness scores representing terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods: ±5,400 amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and vascular plants (±45,000 forbs, graminoids, trees, shrubs) in sub-Saharan Africa across the region’s major land uses (urban, cropland, rangeland, plantation, protected, etc.) and intensities (e.g., large-scale vs smallholder cropland). This dataset was co-produced as part of the Biodiversity Intactness Index for Africa Project. Additional uses include assessing ecosystem condition; rectifying geographic/ taxonomic biases in global biodiversity indicators and maps; and informing the Red List of Ecosystems
Figure 4 in Rediscovery, natural history, and conservation status of Idiocranium russeli Parker, 1936 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Indotyphlidae)
Figure 4. Size of newly collected sample of Idiocranium russeli. (A) Preserved length frequency distribution; (B) fresh total length versus mass.Published as part of Gower, David J., Kouete, Marcel T., Doherty-Bone, Thomas M., Ndeme, Echalle S. & Wilkinson, Mark, 2014, Rediscovery, natural history, and conservation status of Idiocranium russeli Parker, 1936 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Indotyphlidae), pp. 233-253 in Journal of Natural History 49 (3) on page 244, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2014.939733, http://zenodo.org/record/400271
Parental care contributes to vertical transmission of microbes in a skin-feeding and direct-developing caecilian
Abstract Background Our current understanding of vertebrate skin and gut microbiomes, and their vertical transmission, remains incomplete as major lineages and varied forms of parental care remain unexplored. The diverse and elaborate forms of parental care exhibited by amphibians constitute an ideal system to study microbe transmission, yet investigations of vertical transmission among frogs and salamanders have been inconclusive. In this study, we assess bacteria transmission in Herpele squalostoma, an oviparous direct-developing caecilian in which females obligately attend juveniles that feed on their mother’s skin (dermatophagy). Results We used 16S rRNA amplicon-sequencing of the skin and gut of wild caught H. squalostoma individuals (males, females, including those attending juveniles) as well as environmental samples. Sourcetracker analyses revealed that juveniles obtain an important portion of their skin and gut bacteria communities from their mother. The contribution of a mother’s skin to the skin and gut of her respective juveniles was much larger than that of any other bacteria source. In contrast to males and females not attending juveniles, only the skins of juveniles and their mothers were colonized by bacteria taxa Verrucomicrobiaceae, Nocardioidaceae, and Erysipelotrichaceae. In addition to providing indirect evidence for microbiome transmission linked to parental care among amphibians, our study also points to noticeable differences between the skin and gut communities of H. squalostoma and that of many frogs and salamanders, which warrants further investigation. Conclusion Our study is the first to find strong support for vertical bacteria transmission attributed to parental care in a direct-developing amphibian species. This suggests that obligate parental care may promote microbiome transmission in caecilians
Figure 3 in Rediscovery, natural history, and conservation status of Idiocranium russeli Parker, 1936 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Indotyphlidae)
Figure 3. Photographs showing some habitats in the survey area, April 2012. (A) View approximately south from disturbed habitat on the outskirts of Kakpenyi to less disturbed forest in the nearby hills; (B) view approximately north along the Makamune valley from the northern edge of Tinta, the locality 'Tinta 4' is the recently burned patch at the centre of the picture; (C) digging fieldwork at 'Tinta 3'; (D) digging fieldwork at 'Makamune 4'.Published as part of <i>Gower, David J., Kouete, Marcel T., Doherty-Bone, Thomas M., Ndeme, Echalle S. & Wilkinson, Mark, 2014, Rediscovery, natural history, and conservation status of Idiocranium russeli Parker, 1936 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Indotyphlidae), pp. 233-253 in Journal of Natural History 49 (3)</i> on page 242, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2014.939733, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/4002711">http://zenodo.org/record/4002711</a>
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Sexual Dichromatism Drives Diversification within a Major Radiation of African Amphibians.
Theory predicts that sexually dimorphic traits under strong sexual selection, particularly those involved with intersexual signaling, can accelerate speciation and produce bursts of diversification. Sexual dichromatism (sexual dimorphism in color) is widely used as a proxy for sexual selection and is associated with rapid diversification in several animal groups, yet studies using phylogenetic comparative methods to explicitly test for an association between sexual dichromatism and diversification have produced conflicting results. Sexual dichromatism is rare in frogs, but it is both striking and prevalent in African reed frogs, a major component of the diverse frog radiation termed Afrobatrachia. In contrast to most other vertebrates, reed frogs display female-biased dichromatism in which females undergo color transformation, often resulting in more ornate coloration in females than in males. We produce a robust phylogeny of Afrobatrachia to investigate the evolutionary origins of sexual dichromatism in this radiation and examine whether the presence of dichromatism is associated with increased rates of net diversification. We find that sexual dichromatism evolved once within hyperoliids and was followed by numerous independent reversals to monochromatism. We detect significant diversification rate heterogeneity in Afrobatrachia and find that sexually dichromatic lineages have double the average net diversification rate of monochromatic lineages. By conducting trait simulations on our empirical phylogeny, we demonstrate that our inference of trait-dependent diversification is robust. Although sexual dichromatism in hyperoliid frogs is linked to their rapid diversification and supports macroevolutionary predictions of speciation by sexual selection, the function of dichromatism in reed frogs remains unclear. We propose that reed frogs are a compelling system for studying the roles of natural and sexual selection on the evolution of sexual dichromatism across micro- and macroevolutionary timescales