Schulte Lisa M, Ringler Eva, Rojas Bibiana, Stynoski Jennifer L
Goethe University Frankfurt, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 13, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany.
Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Medical University of Vienna, University of Vienna, Veterinaerplatz 1, A-1210 Vienna, Austria.
Herpetological Monographs. 2020 Jul 15;34(1):71-97. doi: 10.1655/HERPMONOGRAPHS-D-19-00002.1.
Despite rising interest among scientists for over two centuries, parental care behavior has not been as thoroughly studied in amphibians as it has in other taxa. The first reports of amphibian parental care date from the early 18th century, when Maria Sibylla Merian went on a field expedition in Suriname and reported frog metamorphs emerging from their mother's dorsal skin. Reports of this and other parental behaviors in amphibians remained descriptive for decades, often as side notes during expeditions with another purpose. However, since the 1980s, experimental approaches have proliferated, providing detailed knowledge about the adaptive value of observed behaviors. Today, we recognize more than 30 types of parental care in amphibians, but most studies focus on just a few families and have favored anurans over urodeles and caecilians. Here, we provide a synthesis of the last three centuries of parental care research in the three orders comprising the amphibians. We draw attention to the progress from the very first descriptions to the most recent experimental studies, and highlight the importance of natural history observations as a source of new hypotheses and necessary context to interpret experimental findings. We encourage amphibian parental care researchers to diversify their study systems to allow for a more comprehensive perspective of the behaviors that amphibians exhibit. Finally, we uncover knowledge gaps and suggest new avenues of research using a variety of disciplines and approaches that will allow us to better understand the function and evolution of parental care behaviors in this diverse group of animals.
尽管两个多世纪以来科学家们对亲代抚育行为的兴趣与日俱增，但两栖动物的亲代抚育行为并未像其他类群那样得到充分研究。关于两栖动物亲代抚育行为的首次报道可追溯到18世纪初，当时玛丽亚·西比拉·梅里安前往苏里南进行实地考察，并报告说有蛙类幼体从它们母亲的背部皮肤中孵化出来。几十年来，关于两栖动物这种及其他亲代行为的报道都只是描述性的，通常是在出于其他目的的考察过程中作为附带记录。然而，自20世纪80年代以来，实验方法不断涌现，为观察到的行为的适应性价值提供了详细的知识。如今，我们认识到两栖动物中有30多种亲代抚育行为类型，但大多数研究仅聚焦于少数几个科，并且更倾向于研究无尾目动物而非有尾目动物和蚓螈目动物。在此,我们对两栖动物所属三个目的亲代抚育研究的过去三个世纪进行了综述总结。我们关注从最初描述到最新实验研究的进展，并强调自然史观察作为新假设来源以及解释实验结果的必要背景的重要性我们鼓励两栖动物亲代抚育行为的研究人员使其研究系统多样化，以便对两栖动物所表现出的行为有更全面的认识。最后，我们发现了知识空白，并建议采用多种学科和方法开辟新的研究途径，从而使我们能更好地理解这一多样动物群体中亲代抚育行为的功能和进化。
