Special Issue "Amphibian Conservation"
A special issue of Diversity (ISSN 1424-2818).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2009) | Viewed by 126049
Special Issue Editor
Interests: amphibians; bioacoustics; biodiversity; conservation biology; evolutionary biology; systematics and taxonomy
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
During the First World Congress of Herpetology in Canterbury, in 1989, researchers began to suspect that amphibian population declines could be a global phenomenon. At the time, these suspicions were fuelled mostly by anecdotal information of researchers going back to their study sites and finding that populations of their study subjects were much reduced or completely gone. Twenty years later, and in light of much research, it is now widely accepted that amphibian declines are indeed an alarming global phenomenon; so much so that more amphibian species are considered to be at a greater risk of extinction than other major vertebrate groups. Threat factors are varied, with the most obvious and ubiquitous being habitat loss and pollution. However, there are other, less understood factors and their synergies, such as climate change and disease. But it is now thought that declines are escalating into extinctions, so it is urgent to take stock of what is already known, what still needs to be determined, and how to better address amphibian loss and implement amphibian conservation action. In this light, it seems timely to dedicate a commemorative special issue to the subjects of amphibian declines and amphibian conservation in 2009.
Dr. Ariadne Angulo
Guest Editor
Keywords
- amphibian declines
- amphibian extinctions
- assessments
- conservation