An Introduction to the Biogeography of South American Anurans

Abstract

South America has undergone complex environmental and geological events that ultimately made it the most climatically and biodiverse continent on the planet, including anuran amphibians. Though biogeographical studies with anurans in South America have been continuously performed during the last decades, most of them focus on specific clades and/or regions. Moreover, no systematic compilation has been performed since the first synthesis of patterns of amphibian distribution, conducted by William E. Duellman by the end of the twentieth century. Here, we perform a systematic species survey of anurans in South America that allow us to revisit previously documented biogeographic patterns of species distribution (e.g., geographical patterns of species richness, species range size) and uncover novel biogeographic patterns, such as mapping anuran phylogenetic and functional diversity metrics across the continent. In summary, this book is made up of seven chapters spanning a wide range of topics that integrate herpetology, biogeography, ecology, and conservation biology. This chapter provides an overview of South American anurans and details the methodology used to generate the species list used in all subsequent chapters, as well as how different environmental variables were gathered and processed to be assessed as potential predictors of the biodiversity metrics explored through this book.