TY - JOUR
T1 - The Frog Fauna of Southwestern Australia
T2 - Diverse, Bizarre, Old, and Polyandrous
AU - Roberts, J. Dale
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - My research on anurans has been diverse: biogeography, speciation, acoustics, polyandry, sperm competition, and conservation. My interests in biology started in natural history but, in the late 1960s as an undergraduate student, I was receptive to emerging new ideas in biogeography and evolutionary biology: continental drift and neutral theory. My focus in this "Perspective"is an explanation of how diversity has evolved in the frog fauna of southwestern Australia, where I have worked since 1978. I discuss the roles of range fragmentation, genetic drift, directional sexual selection, polyploidy, and simultaneous polyandry as processes driving the evolution of diversity in the sometimes-bizarre frog fauna of southwestern Australia. I identify features that can characterize polyandrous anurans: e.g., large testes, sperm morphology, and, possibly, complex calls with an example of the latter in Geocrinia leai. I discuss how current anuran life histories vary across rainfall and temperature gradients and how derivation of more-arid adapted forms is a well-defined historic biogeographic pattern in southwestern Australia. My observations over time leave me cautiously optimistic about the prospects for frogs affected by global warming.
AB - My research on anurans has been diverse: biogeography, speciation, acoustics, polyandry, sperm competition, and conservation. My interests in biology started in natural history but, in the late 1960s as an undergraduate student, I was receptive to emerging new ideas in biogeography and evolutionary biology: continental drift and neutral theory. My focus in this "Perspective"is an explanation of how diversity has evolved in the frog fauna of southwestern Australia, where I have worked since 1978. I discuss the roles of range fragmentation, genetic drift, directional sexual selection, polyploidy, and simultaneous polyandry as processes driving the evolution of diversity in the sometimes-bizarre frog fauna of southwestern Australia. I identify features that can characterize polyandrous anurans: e.g., large testes, sperm morphology, and, possibly, complex calls with an example of the latter in Geocrinia leai. I discuss how current anuran life histories vary across rainfall and temperature gradients and how derivation of more-arid adapted forms is a well-defined historic biogeographic pattern in southwestern Australia. My observations over time leave me cautiously optimistic about the prospects for frogs affected by global warming.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096012890&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1670/19-024
DO - 10.1670/19-024
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096012890
SN - 0022-1511
VL - 54
SP - 306
EP - 316
JO - Journal of Herpetology
JF - Journal of Herpetology
IS - 3
ER -