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Interspecific patterns for egg and clutch sizes of African Bufonidae (Amphibia: Anura)

Liedtke, H. Christoph and Müller, Hendrik and Hafner, Julian and Nagel, Peter and Loader, Simon P.. (2014) Interspecific patterns for egg and clutch sizes of African Bufonidae (Amphibia: Anura). Zoologischer Anzeiger, 253 (4). pp. 309-315.

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Official URL: http://edoc.unibas.ch/dok/A6254473

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Abstract

Little is known about reproductive trade-offs in African amphibians, but such data, particularly in the form of quantitative measurements, are a key for investigating life history evolution. Here we compile and analyze known data on African bufonids from published material and new data from preserved museum specimens, to investigate interspecific patterns of egg and clutch sizes variation. Our data is a composite of mixed sources, including ova data from dissected females and laid clutches from observations in the field. Our study shows that, as body size increases, clutch size increases but egg size decreases, and when correcting for body size, egg size is inversely correlated with clutch size. These parameter interactions however, are different for different reproductive modes. In free-swimming larval developing species, the same trends are recovered, but for lecithotrophic viviparous species no significant correlations could be recovered for clutch size and body size nor for the trade-off between clutch size and egg size, and egg size is positively related to body size. The egg size of Nimbaphrynoides occidentalis (Angel, 1943) is a clear outlier, which may be due to its matrotrophic viviparous reproduction. In addition, we observed no statistical difference between ova data collected from dissections and laid clutch data from field observations, which suggests that such a mixed dataset has utility in comparative analyses.
Faculties and Departments:05 Faculty of Science > Departement Umweltwissenschaften > Ehemalige Einheiten Umweltwissenschaften > Biogeographie (Nagel)
UniBasel Contributors:Loader, Simon Paul and Nagel, Peter and Liedtke, Hans Christoph and Hafner, Julian
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
Publisher:Urban & Fischer
ISSN:0044-5231
e-ISSN:1873-2674
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
Identification Number:
Last Modified:21 Nov 2017 07:49
Deposited On:23 May 2014 08:34

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