Description
This monograph is a comprehensive study of arboranan frogs (families Hylidae, Phyllomedusidae, and Pelodryadidae). It presents results achieved over a 38-year period. As arboranan frogs are practically cosmopolitan, absent only from sub-Saharan Africa and southeastern Asia, this publication is an international venture with collaborators from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Germany, Thailand, and the USA. Introductory chapters cover phylogeny, classification, biogeography, life history, and population declines of Arboranae, but the focus of the book is on oogenesis, spermatogenesis, early embryogenesis, and, especially, the structure and evolution of chromosomes. Like its predecessors on terraranan and hemiphractid frogs (2010 and 2012, respectively), this volume represents an immense initiative to assemble all available information on the cytogenetics of a very large monophyletic group of frogs. It also shows the substantial effort being made to provide new data with everything properly placed in a phylogenetic, evolutionary, and biogeographic framework.
