Taking tadpole biology into the 21st century: a consensus paper from the First Tadpoles International Workshop

Abstract

Although tadpoles are common, frequently encountered vertebrates, their natural history is poorly known. Despite the fact that Brazil harbors the highest anuran diversity in the world, with almost a thousand known species (Segalla et al., 2014), the larvae of many species remain undescribed. The problem is not unique to Brazil. At the turn of the century, approximately ⅔ of almost 3,300 anuran species with a larval stage lacked tadpole descriptions (McDiarmid & Altig, 1999). The proportion of neotropical anurans with free-swimming larvae that are not described is estimated to be around 40% (Provete et al., 2012).