Girini d'Italia / Tadpoles of Italy
Sergio Mezzadri
Giuliano Doria
Where to buy
Description
Tadpoles of Italy is contributes to the recognition and biology of larval stages of Italian Anurans. The book’s framework is built on two fundamental resources: an innovative iconography combining scientific accuracy and aesthetically pleasing images on the one hand, and a synthetic text offering an updated overview of the ecology and behaviour of Anuran larvae, on the other.
This monograph is a useful tool for live tadpole identification through observation of external morphology, colouration and behaviour. To this end, it includes a dichotomous key to be used in the field, which does not take into account some features used in amphibian larvae identification, as such as horned teeth. Tadpoles have been mainly represented in Gosner developmental stages 35-39, which are widely considered the most significant for species identification.
In order to avoid mistakes in depicting and describing the larvae, for a few genera (for instance Rana and Pelophylax), species determination was verified after metamorphosis and/or genetical analysis. A special effort has been made to showing variations in shape and colouration regarding Anuran species whose larvae are known to display a high degree of polymorphism due to variations of environmental parameters.