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Institute
Background
The morphology of anuran larvae is suggested to differ between species with tadpoles living in standing (lentic) and running (lotic) waters. To explore which character combinations within the general tadpole morphospace are associated with these habitats, we studied categorical and metric larval data of 123 (one third of which from lotic environments) Madagascan anurans.
Results
Using univariate and multivariate statistics, we found that certain combinations of fin height, body musculature and eye size prevail either in larvae from lentic or lotic environments.
Conclusion
Evidence for adaptation to lotic conditions in larvae of Madagascan anurans is presented. While lentic tadpoles typically show narrow to moderate oral discs, small to medium sized eyes, convex or moderately low fins and non-robust tail muscles, tadpoles from lotic environments typically show moderate to broad oral discs, medium to big sized eyes, low fins and a robust tail muscle.
The role of evolutionary and ecological processes with regard to the bauplan of anuran larvae remains little understood. We studied tadpoles of 144 lentic or lotic taxa in 22 families from seven zoogeographic regions. Using stacked high-resolution images, standardized examination of 30 morphological characters of preserved tadpoles (of body, tail, oral disc) were scored and compared to the impact of phylogenetic signal (multiple nuclear and mitochondrial markers) and macro-climate. Additionally, larvae were characterized as living in a lentic versus lotic environment and if nutrition specialist or not. Categorical Principal Component Analysis, distance matrices and pairwise correlation analyses were performed. Our results suggest that phylogeny has a higher impact on the morphology than habitat (i.e. lentic, lotic), while no effect of macro-climate or food specialization was found. We emphasize the value of highly standardized morphological data when investigating the influence of different factors of phenotypic variation.
