Morphological Variation and Its Environmental Correlates in the Taihangshan Swelled-Vented Frog across the Qinling Mountains.

ABSTRACT: The Taihangshan swelled-vented frog (Feirana taihangnica), an endemic species to the Qinling Mountains, central China, has experienced a dramatic population decline over the last few decades. The aim of this work was to quantify morphological variation in F. taihangnica across the Qinling Mountains and examine environmental correlates of this variation of morphological traits. We implemented a hierarchical partitioning to estimate the independent contribution of each environmental variable on morphological variations. Temperature seasonality was the greatest contributor in variations of snout-vent length (SVL) and head width, and ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation of the lowest month was the most influential on both thigh length and tibia width. Then, we used generalized additive

SUBMITTER: Fu L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9495075 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature