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Name that amphibian!
Amphibians share many characteristics, including slimy-looking skin and a life cycle that includes time in the water and time on land. Many species of these fascinating animals have their own unique look. In this book, readers are introduced to the amphibian group.
Book
Efficient Expression of Functional (alpha6beta2).sub.2beta3 AChRs in Xenopus Oocytes from Free Subunits Using Slightly Modified alpha6 Subunits
Human ([alpha]6[beta]2)([alpha]4[beta]2)[beta]3 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) are essential for addiction to nicotine and a target for drug development for smoking cessation. Expressing this complex AChR is difficult, but has been achieved using subunit concatamers. In order to determine what limits expression of [alpha]6* AChRs and to efficiently express [alpha]6* AChRs using free subunits, we investigated expression of the simpler ([alpha]6[beta]2).sub.2 [beta]3 AChR. The concatameric form of this AChR assembles well, but is transported to the cell surface inefficiently. Various chimeras of [alpha]6 with the closely related [alpha]3 subunit increased expression efficiency with free subunits and produced pharmacologically equivalent functional AChRs. A chimera in which the large cytoplasmic domain of [alpha]6 was replaced with that of [alpha]3 increased assembly with [beta]2 subunits and transport of AChRs to the oocyte surface. Another chimera replacing the unique methionine 211 of [alpha]6 with leucine found at this position in transmembrane domain 1 of [alpha]3 and other [alpha] subunits increased assembly of mature subunits containing [beta]3 subunits within oocytes. Combining both [alpha]3 sequences in an [alpha]6 chimera increased expression of functional ([alpha]6[beta]2).sub.2 [beta]3 AChRs to 12-fold more than with concatamers. This is pragmatically useful, and provides insights on features of [alpha]6 subunit structure that limit its expression in transfected cells.
Journal Article
Creepy amphibians
Readers will learn all about the weird things amphibians do, including how some mother frogs birth their babies from under the skin on their back and that a salamander can re-grow its tail.
Book
Biogeographic Analysis Reveals Ancient Continental Vicariance and Recent Oceanic Dispersal in Amphibians
Amphibia comprises over 7000 extant species distributed in almost every ecosystem on every continent except Antarctica. Most species also show high specificity for particular habitats, biomes, or climatic niches, seemingly rendering long-distance dispersal unlikely. Indeed, many lineages still seem to show the signature of their Pangaean origin, approximately 300 Ma later. To date, no study has attempted a large-scale historical-biogeographic analysis of the group to understand the distribution of extant lineages. Here, I use an updated chronogram containing 3309 species (~45% of extant diversity) to reconstruct their movement between 12 global ecoregions. I find that Pangaean origin and subsequent Laurasian and Gondwanan fragmentation explain a large proportion of patterns in the distribution of extant species. However, dispersal during the Cenozoic, likely across land bridges or short distances across oceans, has also exerted a strong influence. Finally, there are at least three strongly supported instances of long-distance oceanic dispersal between former Gondwanan landmasses during the Cenozoic. Extinction from intervening areas seems to be a strong factor in shaping present-day distributions. Dispersal and extinction from and between ecoregions are apparently tied to the evolution of extraordinarily adaptive expansion-oriented phenotypes that allow lineages to easily colonize new areas and diversify, or conversely, to extremely specialized phenotypes or heavily relictual climatic niches that result in strong geographic localization and limited diversification.
Journal Article
Salamander, frog, and polliwog : what is an amphibian?
What makes an amphibian an amphibian? All amphibians are cold-blooded and have backbones, but most amphibians share other characteristics as well. Rhymes from Brian P. Cleary and humorous illustrations from Martin Goneau provide a fun introduction to this animal group.
Book
Epidemic disease decimates amphibian abundance, species diversity, and evolutionary history in the highlands of central Panama
Amphibian populations around the world are experiencing unprecedented declines attributed to a chytrid fungal pathogen, Batrachochytriumdendrobatidis. Despitetheseverity ofthecrisis, quantitative analyses of the effects of the epidemic on amphibian abundance and diversity have been unavailable as a result of the lack of equivalent data collected before and following disease outbreak. We present a community-level assessment combining long-term field surveys and DNA barcode data describing changes in abundance and evolutionary diversity within the amphibian community of El Copé, Panama, following a disease epidemic and mass-mortality event. The epidemic reduced taxonomic, lineage, and phylogenetic diversity similarly. We discovered that 30 species were lost, including five undescribed species, representing 41% of total amphibian lineage diversity in El Copé. These extirpations represented 33% of the evolutionary history of amphibians within the community, and variation in the degree of population loss and decline among species was random with respect to the community phylogeny. Our approach provides a fast, economical, and informative analysis of loss in a community whether measured by species or phylogenetic diversity.
Journal Article
Focus on amphibians
Presents amphibians and describes the bodies, life cycles, and habitats of various types.
Book
Phylogeography and Demographic History of Babina pleuraden
Factors that determine genetic structure of species in southwestern China remain largely unknown. In this study, sequences of two mitochondrial genes (COI and cyt b) were determined to investigate the phylogeography and demography of Babina pleuraden, a pond frog endemic to southwestern China. A total of 262 individuals from 22 populations across the entire range of the species were collected. Our results indicate that B. pleuraden comprises five well-supported mitochondrial lineages roughly corresponding to five geographical areas. The phylogeographic structure of B. pleuraden has been shaped primarily by the unique regional responses of the Yunnan Plateau to the rapid uplift of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau occurred c. 2.5 Mya (B phrase of Qingzang Movement) and climatic oscillation during middle Pleistocene (c. 0.64-0.36 Mya), rather than by the paleo-drainage systems. The present wide distribution of the species has resulted from recent population expansion (c. 0.053-0.025 Mya) from multiple refugia prior to the Last Glacial Maximum, corresponding to the scenario of \"refugia within refugia\".
Journal Article
Divergence Time Estimation Using Fossils as Terminal Taxa and the Origins of Lissamphibia
Were molecular data available for extinct taxa, questions regarding the origins of many groups could be settled in short order. As this is not the case, various strategies have been proposed to combine paleontological and neontological data sets. The use of fossil dates as node age calibrations for divergence time estimation from molecular phylogenies is commonplace. In addition, simulations suggest that the addition of morphological data from extinct taxa may improve phylogenetic estimation when combined with molecular data for extant species, and some studies have merged morphological and molecular data to estimate combined evidence phylogenies containing both extinct and extant taxa. However, few, if any, studies have attempted to estimate divergence times using phylogenies containing both fossil and living taxa sampled for both molecular and morphological data. Here, I infer both the phylogeny and the time of origin for Lissamphibia and a number of stem tetrapods using Bayesian methods based on a data set containing morphological data for extinct taxa, molecular data for extant taxa, and molecular and morphological data for a subset of extant taxa. The results suggest that Lissamphibia is monophyletic, nested within Lepospondyli, and originated in the late Carboniferous at the earliest. This research illustrates potential pitfalls for the use of fossils as post hoc age constraints on internal nodes and highlights the importance of explicit phylogenetic analysis of extinct taxa. These results suggest that the application of fossils as minima or maxima on molecular phylogenies should be supplemented or supplanted by combined evidence analyses whenever possible.
Journal Article