Amphibians in Zootaxa: 20 years documenting the global diversity of frogs, salamanders, and caecilians

Zootaxa is a mega-journal that since its inception, 20 years ago, has contributed to the documentation of the planet?s biodiversity. Its role concerning terrestrial vertebrates has been crucial especially for amphibians, which are the most threatened class of vertebrates. As current editors of the Amphibia section, we reviewed the state of knowledge of taxonomic publications on amphibians over the last two decades (from 2001 to 2020). Our review reveals that 2,533 frogs, 259 salamanders, and 55 caecilians have been named in these 20 years, mainly in the tropical regions of South America, Asia, and Africa. More than half (57%) of these species descriptions were published in only 10 journals. At least 827 species of the new amphibians (29% of the total) were described in Zootaxa. This mega-journal has served also as a place of publication for monographs and systematic reviews, in addition to short articles documenting the vocalizations of anurans and the morphology of embryos and larvae. Its efficient evaluation process, the freedom of manuscript length, including full-color figures, and free of cost for the authors, has made Zootaxa a favorite for amphibian researchers. In an era of accelerating rates of biodiversity loss, documenting, describing, naming, and proposing evolutionary scenarios for species is, more than ever, an urgent task.Fil: Rivera Correa, Mauricio. Universidad de Antioquia; ColombiaFil: Baldo, Juan Diego. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Posadas | Universidad Nacional de Misiones. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Posadas; ArgentinaFil: Vera Candioti, María Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico - Tucumán. Unidad Ejecutora Lillo; ArgentinaFil: Goyannes Dill Orrico, Victor. Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz; BrasilFil: Blackburn, David C.. University Of Florida. Florida Museum Of History; Estados UnidosFil: Castroviejo Fisher, Santiago. Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Chan, Kin Onn. National University of Singapore; SingapurFil: Gambale, Priscilla. Universidade Federal de Goiás; BrasilFil: Gower, David J.. Natural History Museum; Reino UnidoFil: Quah, Evan S. H.. National University of Singapore; SingapurFil: Rowley, Jodi J. L.. University of New South Wales; AustraliaFil: Twomey, Evan. Goethe Universitat Frankfurt; AlemaniaFil: Vences, Miguel. Technische Universitat Carolo Wilhelmina Zu Braunschweig.; Alemani

Is Chytridiomycosis an Emerging Infectious Disease in Asia?

The disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has caused dramatic amphibian population declines and extinctions in Australia, Central and North America, and Europe. Bd is associated with >200 species extinctions of amphibians, but not all species that become infected are susceptible to the disease. Specifically, Bd has rapidly emerged in some areas of the world, such as in Australia, USA, and throughout Central and South America, causing population and species collapse. The mechanism behind the rapid global emergence of the disease is poorly understood, in part due to an incomplete picture of the global distribution of Bd. At present, there is a considerable amount of geographic bias in survey effort for Bd, with Asia being the most neglected continent. To date, Bd surveys have been published for few Asian countries, and infected amphibians have been reported only from Indonesia, South Korea, China and Japan. Thus far, there have been no substantiated reports of enigmatic or suspected disease-caused population declines of the kind that has been attributed to Bd in other areas. In order to gain a more detailed picture of the distribution of Bd in Asia, we undertook a widespread, opportunistic survey of over 3,000 amphibians for Bd throughout Asia and adjoining Papua New Guinea. Survey sites spanned 15 countries, approximately 36° latitude, 111° longitude, and over 2000 m in elevation. Bd prevalence was very low throughout our survey area (2.35% overall) and infected animals were not clumped as would be expected in epizootic events. This suggests that Bd is either newly emerging in Asia, endemic at low prevalence, or that some other ecological factor is preventing Bd from fully invading Asian amphibians. The current observed pattern in Asia differs from that in many other parts of the world

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Our field cameras melted in the bushfires. When we opened them, the results were startling

This article is a preview of Flora, Fauna, Fire, a multimedia project launching on Monday July 13. The project tracks the recovery of Australia’s native plants and animals after last summer’s bushfire tragedy

Movement patterns and habitat use of rainforest stream frogs in northern Queensland, Australia: implications for extinction vulnerability

Amphibians are one of the most highly threatened groups of animals, but their effective conservation is hampered by a paucity of basic ecological knowledge, particularly for tropical stream-breeding species, in which declines have been most common and severe. We examined the movement patterns and habitat use of three stream-breeding frog species at five sites in northern Queensland, Australia. Movement and habitat use differed significantly among species. Litoria lesueuri moved more frequently and greater distances than did our other study species, and was often located away from streams, moving between intact rainforest and highly disturbed environments. Litoria genimaculata moved less frequently and shorter distances and was more restricted to stream environments compared with L. lesueuri, but was often located in the canopy. L. genimaculata occasionally moved large distances along and between streams, but was never located outside of intact rainforest. Litoria nannotis moved almost as frequently as the other species, but remained in streams during the day, did not move large distances along or between streams, and was always located within intact rainforest. Because of its sedentary behaviour, narrow habitat tolerance and affinity for stream environments, L. nannotis may be more vulnerable to extinction in human-modified landscapes compared with L. lesueuri and L. genimaculata

Data from: Environmental constraints and call evolution in torrent dwelling frogs

While acoustic signals are important for communication in many taxa, signal propagation is affected by environmental properties. Strong environmental constraints should drive call evolution, favoring signals with greater transmission distance and content integrity in a given calling habitat. Yet, few empirical studies have verified this prediction, possibly due to a shortcoming in habitat characterization, which is often too broad. Here we assess the potential impact of environmental constraints on the evolution of advertisement call in four groups of torrent dwelling frogs in the family Ranidae. We reconstruct the evolution of calling site preferences, both broadly categorized and at a finer scale, onto a phylogenetic tree for 148 species with five markers (∼ 3600 bp). We test models of evolution for six call traits for 79 species with regard to the reconstructed history of calling site preferences and estimate their ancestral states. We find that in spite of existing morphological constraints, vocalizations of torrent dwelling species are most probably constrained by the acoustic specificities of torrent habitats and particularly their high level of ambient noise. We also show that a fine-scale characterization of calling sites allows a better perception of the impact of environmental constraints on call evolution

A new species of Leptolalax (Anura: Megophryidae) from northeastern Cambodia

Rowley, Jodi J. L., Stuart, Bryan L., Thy, Neang, Emmett, David A. (2010): A new species of Leptolalax (Anura: Megophryidae) from northeastern Cambodia. Zootaxa 2567: 57-68, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19731

Frogs during the flood: differential behaviours of two amphibian species in a dryland floodplain wetland

Flow regimes structure biotic processes and communities of floodplain wetlands. Most current understanding of the influence of the flood pulse on vertebrates is based on knowledge of relationships between flow regimes and fish and bird populations. Its influence on amphibian populations is poorly known, and possibly difficult to disentangle due to the strong influence of weather on amphibian movement and breeding. We predicted that the behaviour of two functionally different amphibian species would vary due to different physiological constraints and life histories driving habitat use and activity periods. We radio-tracked 52 frogs, 27 barking marsh frogs (Limnodynastes fletcheri, Limnodynastidae) and 25 green tree frogs (Litoria caerulea, Hylidae), to investigate the influence of weather and flooding on habitat use, size of activity area and nightly movement. Activity area sizes and nightly distances of the species were highly variable. Limnodynastes fletcheri had a greater area of activity during floods (mean area: 5237 ± 2556 (SE) m2 cf. 639 ± 247 m2 post flood) while the tree frog had a greater area after flooding (207 ± 68 m2 cf. 1946 ± 530 m2). Limnodynastes fletcheri movement was little influenced by weather or inundation, with distances slightly restricted by increasing wind speed. However, use of floodplain habitat and coincidental breeding behaviour indicated responsiveness by L. fletcheri to flooding. Litoria caerulea moved further with increasing rainfall and nightly temperatures, seldom used flooded areas and there was no evidence of breeding. Although the flood pulse is the dominant structuring force on the floodplain, its influence varies on amphibian species. Consequently for conservation, L. fletcheri populations may be negatively affected by river regulatory activities, but would respond to environmental flow management, whereas L. caerulea appears unlikely to be affected by river regulation, though the confounding effects of rain and preferred habitat inundation needs exploring