Forests as promoters of terrestrial life-history strategies in East African amphibians.

ABSTRACT: Many amphibian lineages show terrestrialization of their reproductive strategy and breeding is partially or completely independent of water. A number of causal factors have been proposed for the evolution of terrestrialized breeding. While predation has received repeated attention as a potential factor, the influence of other factors such as habitat has never been tested using appropriate data or methods. Using a dataset that comprises 180 amphibian species from various East African habitats, we tested whether species occurring in different habitats show different patterns of terrestrialization in their breeding strategy. We recovered a significant association between terrestrialized breeding strategies and forest habitats. In general, forest seems to act as a facilitator, providing a perm

SUBMITTER: Muller H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3645021 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature