title: Forests as promoters of terrestrial life-history strategies in East African amphibians.
abstract: Many amphibian lineages show terrestrialization of their reproductive strategy and breeding is partially or completely independent of water. A number of causal factors have been proposed for the evolution of terrestrialized breeding. While predation has received repeated attention as a potential factor, the influence of other factors such as habitat has never been tested using appropriate data or methods. Using a dataset that comprises 180 amphibian species from various East African habitats, we tested whether species occurring in different habitats show different patterns of terrestrialization in their breeding strategy. We recovered a significant association between terrestrialized breeding strategies and forest habitats. In general, forest seems to act as a facilitator, providing a permissive environment for the evolution of terrestrialized breeding strategies. However, while terrestrial oviposition is strongly correlated with lowland and montane forest habitat, complete terrestrial development is significantly correlated with montane forest only, indicating different selective pressures acting at different steps towards complete terrestrial development.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Spezielle Zoologie und Evolutionsbiologie mit Phyletischem Museum, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, , Erbertstrassee 1, 07743 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Hendrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: H Christoph
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Liedtke
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Menegon
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Beck
authors.forename: Liliana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ballesteros-Mejia
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nagel
authors.forename: Simon P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Loader
mesh_terms: D000351:Africa, Eastern; D000663:Amphibians / Q000145:classification / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D017753:Ecosystem; D014197:Trees
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