The great sensitivity of amphibians to land disturbance is one of the main causes that contributed to their worldwide decline. One fundamental approach in assessing amphibian ability to reflect habitat degradation is to measure their phenotypic changes in contrasting environments. We examined the extent to which several morphological traits of the endemic anuran Pelophylax perezi responded to agricultural conversion in Monegros, an arid region in NE Spain. Specifically, we determined how body size, body mass, body condition (BC) and fluctuating asymmetry (FA) of different frog classes varied among habitats with different degree of management, i.e. rice fields vs. control ponds (i.e. small reservoirs). Leer más.

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When working in the field one must sometimes be creative. During our research in Nicaragua (2011) on Bolitoglossa insularis we needed to device a method to  establish the home range of these small, lungless salamanders. – Leer más.

When a marine turtle is incidentally by-caught by a longliner, fishermen try to cut the line — without hauling it on board — and release the turtle into the sea. However, a research published in the journalMarine Ecology Progress Series alerts that about 40% of post-released turtles die some months later due to the impact of longline fishing. Leer más.

Quick—when you think of an agitated anole, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps a quick color change, maybe even some squeaking and biting and, of course, a couple flashes of the dewlap all may have been high on the list. Well, not to be outdone by its cousins from the new world, the Middle-eastern yellow-spotted Agama (Trapelus flavimaculatus)  has come up with a spectacular display that involves all three behaviors listed above. Leer más.