Frogs and toads have become canaries in the coal mine when it comes to conservation, as the discovery of malformed frogs has brought increased attention to global habitat loss, declining biodiversity, and environmental pollution. Midwestern species of frogs and toads--already declining due to habitat loss from agriculture--have been greatly affected by this worldwide phenomenon. VanDeWalle includes a complete description of each species along with distinguishing characteristics for three subspecies, information about range and habitat preferences, diet, types of calls, and breeding season.

This book covers bog frogs, spring peepers, and more.With more than forty native and introduced species of frogs and toads occurring in the southeastern United States, the region represents the heart of frog and toad diversity in the country. Renowned herpetologists Mike Dorcas and Whit Gibbons provide us with the most comprehensive and authoritative, yet accessible and fun-to-read, guide to these sometimes wet, sometimes warty wonders of nature.Dorcas and Gibbons enumerate the distinguishing characteristics of frogs and toads, including how they are different from other amphibians and the differences between a frog and a toad. Also discussed are the morphology of frogs and toads, the main groups to be found in the Southeast, and their habitats. Individual species accounts contain a physical description of the species plus information about distribution and habitat, behavior and activity, food and feeding, predators and defense, calls and vocalizations, reproduction and description of eggs and tadpoles, and conservation. Accompanying each account are photographs illustrating typical adults and variations and distribution maps for the Southeast and the United States.Given the recent worldwide decline in amphibian populations and increasing scientific and popular concern for what these declines mean for all other organisms, ""Frogs and Toads of the Southeast"" will appeal to people of all ages and levels of knowledge interested in natural history and conservation. The guide will help foster the growing interest in frogs and toads as well as cultivate a desire to protect and conserve these fascinating amphibians and their habitats.It provides a conservation-oriented approach. It includes approximately 250 color photographs. It contains approximately 45 distribution maps. It provides a clear description and photographs of each species in both tadpole and adult stages. It includes chapters on identification, vocalizations, reproduction, global diversity (including remarkable species such as the gastric brooding frog, poison dart frogs, and saltwater frogs), and introduced species.

In 1990 an international group of biologists, meeting to discuss rumors of declines in the number of amphibians, discovered that amphibian disappearances once thought to be a local problem were not--the problem was global. And, even more disturbing, amphibians were disappearing not just from areas settled by humans but from regions of the world once believed to be pristine. Under the mantle of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force, this timely book addresses three fundamental questions for the midwestern United States: are amphibians declining; if so, why; and, if so, what can be done to halt these losses?

In the Midwest--defined here as Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan--there can be no doubt that the number of salamanders and frogs has declined with Euro-American settlement and the conversion to an agriculturally dominated landscape. Habitat loss and landscape fragmentation have been major factors in this decline, as have aquacultural uses of natural wetlands. Bullfrog introductions have eliminated populations of native amphibians, and collecting for the biological supply trade has reduced the number of individuals within many populations. The goal of the forty-two essays in this well-documented, well-illustrated book is to put between two covers all we know now about the status of midwestern amphibians. By doing this, the editor has created a readily accessible historical record for future studies.

Organized into sections covering landscape patterns and biogeography, species status, regional and state status, diseases and toxins, conservation, and monitoring and applications, this landmark volume will serve as the foundation for amphibian conservation in the Midwest.

Until now, no detailed treatment of the Pennsylvania herpetofauna has ever been published, nor have recent books dealt with the herpetofauna of the entire northeastern United States. Amphibians and Reptiles of Pennsylvania and the Northeast is a comprehensive guide to the amphibians and reptiles of the whole region.

Each account contains a general description of the species, major color and pattern variations, ontogenetic changes in patterns and appearance, confusing species, range, and ecology and reproductive biology. This guide is intended for use by both amateurs and professionals and allows convenient retrieval of field data and natural history accounts. Amphibians and Reptiles of Pennsylvania and the Northeast:
-- Contains complete and easy-to-use keys to all the reptiles and both the adult and larval amphibians of the Northeast.
-- Features high-quality photographs to illustrate all species of amphibians and reptiles in the region as well as significant color variations and life history stages.
-- Includes detailed spot-distribution maps of each species within Pennsylvania and outline maps of each species' distribution throughout the northeastern United States.
-- Presents extensive new data on the status and distribution of the amphibians and reptiles of Pennsylvania.

"The 1995 discovery of malformed frogs in a Minnesota wetland is one of a few singular events in the history of environmental awareness that has forever changed our views regarding the plight of global biodiversity. Lannoo's book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the malformed frog phenomenon and its likely causes, as well as its possible relation to environmentally mediated malformations in humans. It immediately ranks as a definitive source for information regarding malformed frogs in the larger context of global amphibian declines."--James Hanken, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Curator in Herpetology, and Director, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
"Lannoo's book is unequivocally the definitive work on frog malformations, with broad relevance to the global decline of amphibians, the degradation of natural wetlands, and our own environmental legacy. This scholarly presentation by a top-rate scientist focuses on an irrefutable phenomenon in which frogs are serving as sentinels to which all of society should be listening."--J. Whitfield Gibbons, Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia
""Malformed Frogs" is a scientific detective story with a moral: things aren't often what they seem! Mike Lannoo's engaging prose captures the joys and drudgery of fieldwork as well as the fallible, human side of science, all in the service of understanding the occurrence of deformed amphibians. He convincingly shows that although not one of the commonly advanced explanations can suffice, we know enough right now to solve the problem."--Harry W. Greene, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University

Amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) are a significant but much-neglected component of the natural economy of the province of Alberta. The Amphibians and Reptiles of Alberta, Second Edition continues both as a field guide and a comprehensive natural history, builds on the strengths of the first with a richly illustrated text and colour photographs of the species taken by renowned wildlife photographer Wayne Lynch. The Amphibians and Reptiles of Alberta, First Edition won an Emerald Award for Environmental Excellence and an award from the Book Publishers Association of Alberta. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated. Nomenclature has been changed to reflect current thinking in the field. New photographs have been added, and maps and illustrations have been updated. This is the essential reference for Alberta herpetofauna.

Millions upon millions of salmon and steelhead once filled California streams, providing a plentiful and sustainable food resource for the original peoples of the region. But over the years, dams and irrigation diversions have reduced natural spawning habitat from an estimated 6,000 miles to fewer than 300. River pollution has also hit hard at fish populations, which within recent decades have diminished by 80 percent. One species, the San Joaquin River spring chinook, became extinct soon after World War II. Other species are nearly extinct. This volume documents the reasons for the decline; it also offers practical suggestions about how the decline might be reversed. The California salmon story is presented here in human perspective: its broad historical, economic, cultural, and political facets, as well as the biological, are all treated. No comparable work has ever been published, although some of the material has been available for half a century. In the richly varied contributions in this volume, the reader meets Indians whose history is tied to the history of the salmon and steelhead upon which they depend; commercial trollers who see their livelihood and unique lifestyle vanishing; biologists and fishery managers alarmed at the loss of river water habitable by fish and at the effects of hatcheries on native gene pools. Women who fish, conservation-minded citizens, foresters, economists, outdoor writers, engineers, politicians, city youth restoring streambeds-all are represented. Their lives-and the lives of all Californians-are affected in myriad ways by the fate of California's salmon and steelhead. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.

The Fishes of the Western North Atlantic series, which began publication in the 1940s by Yale University's Sears Foundation for Marine Research, was from its beginnings conceived to synthesize and make accessible the wealth of information in widely scattered published accounts of the fish fauna of the region for both the layman and the specialist, presenting critical reviews rather than compilations. These reference works are still considered valuable and of interest today to both general audiences and the academic community. As described in the Preface to the first volume, the series was "written on the premise that it should be useful to those in many walks of life-to those casually ... interested ..., to the sportsman ..., to the fisherman ..., as well as to the amateur ichthyologist and the professional scientist." These books remain authoritative studies of the anadromous, estuarine, and marine fishes of the waters of the western North Atlantic from Hudson Bay southward to the Amazon, ranking as primary references for both amateurs and professionals interested in fishes, and as significant working tools for students of the sea.

Part One, the inaugural volume in the Fishes of the Western North Atlantic series, describes lancelets, hagfishes, lampreys, and sharks. Specialist authorships of its sections include detailed species descriptions with keys, life history and general habits, abundance, range, and relation to human activity, such as economic and sporting importance. The text is written for an audience of amateur and professional ichthyologists, sportsmen, and fishermen, based on new revisions, original research, and critical reviews of existing information. Species are illustrated by exceptional black and white line drawings, accompanied by distribution maps and tables of meristic data. Distributed for the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

The Fishes of the Western North Atlantic series, which began publication in the 1940s by Yale University's Sears Foundation for Marine Research, was from its beginnings conceived to synthesize and make accessible the wealth of information in widely scattered published accounts of the fish fauna of the region for both the layman and the specialist, presenting critical reviews rather than compilations. These reference works are still considered valuable and of interest today to both general audiences and the academic community. As described in the Preface to the first volume, the series was "written on the premise that it should be useful to those in many walks of life-to those casually ... interested ..., to the sportsman ..., to the fisherman ..., as well as to the amateur ichthyologist and the professional scientist." These books remain authoritative studies of the anadromous, estuarine, and marine fishes of the waters of the western North Atlantic from Hudson Bay southward to the Amazon, ranking as primary references for both amateurs and professionals interested in fishes, and as significant working tools for students of the sea.

The Fishes of the Western North Atlantic series, which began publication in the 1940s by Yale University's Sears Foundation for Marine Research, was from its beginnings conceived to synthesize and make accessible the wealth of information in widely scattered published accounts of the fish fauna of the region for both the layman and the specialist, presenting critical reviews rather than compilations. These reference works are still considered valuable and of interest today to both general audiences and the academic community. As described in the Preface to the first volume, the series was "written on the premise that it should be useful to those in many walks of life-to those casually ... interested ..., to the sportsman ..., to the fisherman ..., as well as to the amateur ichthyologist and the professional scientist." These books remain authoritative studies of the anadromous, estuarine, and marine fishes of the waters of the western North Atlantic from Hudson Bay southward to the Amazon, ranking as primary references for both amateurs and professionals interested in fishes, and as significant working tools for students of the sea.

"Assays of assemblages of amphibians and reptiles provide important information on community structure in the tropics. These ectothermic organisms are highly responsive to slight differences in the environment and to seasonal differences, such as patterns of rainfall. Most species seem to have rather restricted home ranges; therefore, data gathered in a restricted area provide much better insight into the requirements of, and potential interactions among, the species in the assemblage." from the IntroductionThe rainforests in the southwestern part of the Amazon Basin in southeastern Peru are home to scores of amphibians and reptiles. Cusco Amazonico is a richly illustrated and comprehensive account of the lives of 151 of these species. William E. Duellman's masterpiece of community ecology includes descriptions of the physical environment and vegetation found in this unique habitat along with syntheses of abundance, mass, feeding, reproductive guilds, and daily and seasonal patterns of activity. Identification keys in English and Spanish precede detailed and illustrated species accounts. Tadpoles of many frogs are described and illustrated.Cusco Amazonico will become a standard reference for herpetologists, tropical biologists, biogeographers, ecologists, and conservationists and stands on its own as a portrait of an animal community in a unique bioregion. The illustrations include 236 color photographs, 121 charts and graphs, 16 maps, 42 line drawings, 2 halftones, and 56 sets of audiospectrograms and waveforms. There are 71 tables."

The preeminent naturalists Albert Hazen Wright and Anna Allen Wright spent years assembling the wealth of material on frogs and toads appearing in this widely used handbook, the third edition of which was originally published in 1949. With abundant black-and-white photographs, colorful descriptions, journal notes from the field, and excerpts from the literature, their personalized natural history emphasizes amphibians observed in the wild. In a foreword to the 1995 paperback edition, Roy McDiarmid, a foremost specialist on frogs and toads, brings the book into historical perspective and supplies information to bring it up to date. Accounts of more than 100 species and subspecies cover such topics as common and scientific names, range, habitat, size, and general appearance, as well as color, structure, voice, and breeding. Separate keys are given for secondary sexual characteristics, eggs, tadpoles, families, and species. Generous quotations from the Wrights' field journals give the reader a sense of the problems and satisfactions of their work.

As the Earth's number of species decreases, biologists have been concerned particularly with general decline in amphibian populations, viewing them as particularly sensitive indicators of the health of the environment. Yet one of the most difficult problems in conservation biology is the lack of baseline data against which to measure population changes. Measuring and Monitoring Biological Diversity is the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of standard methods for biodiversity sampling of amphibians, with information on analyzing and using data that will interest biologists in general. In this manual, nearly fifty herpetologists recommend ten standard sampling procedures for measuring and monitoring amphibian and many other populations. The contributors discuss each procedure, along with the circumstances for its appropriate use. In addition, they provide a detailed protocol for each procedure's implementation, a list of necessary equipment and personnel, and suggestions for analyzing the data. The data obtained using these standard methods are comparable across sites and through time and, as a result, are extremely useful for making decisions about habitat protection, sustained use, and restoration - decisions that are particularly relevant for threatened amphibian populations.