background: there has been increasing awareness throughout the world regarding the remarkable decrease in amphibian population. for such amphibian population decline several causes have been given. cadmium, a heavy metal is released both from natural sources (leaching of cadmium rich soils) and anthropogenic activities to the aquatic and terrestrial environments. this study evaluated the toxici...

Amphibian species are declining worldwide, with a negative trend affecting both rare and widespread species. There is increasing evidence that resources must be allocated not only toward the monitoring of charismatic species; however, attention abundant has often been minimal. Here, we describe strong reduction in numbers several amphibian over last 3 years observed three independent studies co...

American tree frog Hypsiboas punctatus, an amphibian that exhibits natural fluorescence. Carlos Taboada et al. traced the frog’s fluorescence to a class of compounds called hyloins, and found that in low-light conditions the fluorescence substantially enhances the brightness of individuals and matches the sensitivity of amphibian night vision. See the article by Taboada et al. on pages 3672–367...

abstract since amphibians feeds on insects, they have crucial role in controlling the population of pests in various ecosystems. although their importance is clear, but systematics and biodiversity of them has been poorly studied. the aim of this research, conducted in 2014, is to identify amphibians of talesh township and their biological roles in pest control. sampling procedure has been done...

THERMAL HOMEOSTASIS Amphibians are poikilothermic ectotherms. Their core body temperatures are determined by ambient environmental temperatures, and an amphibian thermoregulates by moving through the mosaic of environmental temperatures to find those appropriate for its current physiological needs. The preferred operating temperature zones (POTZ) vary tremendously between species, between geogr...

Amphibian population declines and sudden species' extinctions began to be noted at the beginning of the 1980s. Understanding the causes of the losses is hampered by our poor knowledge of the amphibian fauna in many parts of the world. Amphibian taxa are still being described at a high rate, especially in the tropics, which means that even quantifying species lost as a percentage of the current ...

The genus Epomis is represented in Israel by two species: Epomis dejeani and Epomis circumscriptus. In the central coastal plain these species are sympatric but do not occur in the same sites. The objective of this study was to record and describe trophic interactions between the adult beetles and amphibian species occurring in the central coastal plain of Israel. Day and night surveys at three...

The blood meals of field-collected female Culex territans (Diptera: Culicidae) were concurrently assayed for the presence of trypanosomes and for vertebrate host identification. We amplified vertebrate DNA in 42 of 119 females and made positive identification to the host species level in 29 of those samples. Of the 119 field-collected Cx. territans females, 24 were infected with trypanosomes. P...

Having started working in the field of amphibian embryology over 50 years ago, I make some comments about the changes that seem to me to have taken place in this field over this period. Over the period 1885 to 1960, much of the highly regarded experimental embryology was conducted on amphibian eggs and embryos. Indeed, much of this work was conducted in Germany and Switzerland using eggs and em...

Although amphibians have relatively high rates of road mortality in urban areas, the conditions under which traffic threatens the survival of local amphibian populations remain unclear. In the Sandhills region of North Carolina (U.S.A.), we counted living and dead amphibians along two transects (total length 165 km) established on roads in areas with varying degrees of urbanization. We found 26...