Despite the remarkable diversity found in squamate reptiles, most of their species tend to be found in warm/dry environments, suggesting that climatic requirements played a crucial role in their diversification, yet little is known about the evolution of their climatic niches. In this study, we integrate climatic information associated with the geographical distribution of 1882 squamate species and their phylogenetic relationships to investigate the tempo and mode of climatic niche evolution in squamates, both over time and among lineages. We found that changes in climatic niche dynamics were pronounced over their recent squamate evolutionary history, and we identified extensive evidence for rate heterogeneity in squamate climatic niche evolution. Most rate shifts involved accelerations, particularly over the past 50 Myr. Most squamates occupy similar regions of the climatic niche space, with only a few lineages diversifying into colder and humid climatic conditions. The changes from arid to mesic conditions in some regions of the globe may have provided opportunities for climatic niche evolution, although most lineages tended to remain near their ancestral niche. Variation in rates of climatic niche evolution seems common, particularly in response to the availability of new climatic conditions over evolutionary time.
The chytrid fungus (Bd) is one of the main causes of recent amphibian population declines and extinctions. However, one possible disease transmission pathway remained unexplored: the insect-borne transport between hosts. We found Bd DNA on specialized blood-sucking midges, which could indicate the transport of alive zoospores between amphibian hosts, in this case acting as Bd carriers in the wild.
The genus Corethrella Coquillet, 1902 are known as a group of nocturnal frog-biting-midges (Diptera: Corethrellidae) which locate their frog-hosts through the sound emitted by their conspicuous calls. The classical method to capture these midges consists in using modified Center Disease Control (CDC) traps in which speakers emitting frog calls replace the light bulb. However, the high cost, volume and weight of CDC traps hampers several studies in remote areas and in countries with low research investments. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to compare the capture rate of the classic modified CDC trap with a new trap recently developed, here referred as PTM. We conducted an experiment at flooded areas in the vicinity of a lake in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina State, southern Brazil in which we arranged PTM and modified CDC traps emitting frog calls of two species commonly found in the area, Physalaemus nanus (Boulenger, 1888) and P. cuvieri Fitzinger, 1826. In a total of 34,5h sampling hours per trap (one trial per night for five days), the PTM traps captured over 20 times more individuals than modified CDC traps (n= 1594; n=72, respectively) and the same number of species (3). Those results demonstrate that the PTM method had a higher capture rate, are more practical and has a lower cost than modified CDC traps. We suggest further studies to investigate which aspects could explain the differences between capture rates among PTM, BG sentinel, bottle and CDC modified methods.
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