Richard M. Lehtinen

College of Wooster · Department of Biology

Invasive species are widely believed to be a major threat to biodiversity. Therefore, invasive species control is a common practice among land managers. However, the impacts of invasive species control on nontarget organisms are often unknown. To examine the impact of invasive plant removal on a functionally important, but often overlooked, group o...

Tropical rainforests are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. Since so much old-growth rainforest continues to be destroyed, much effort has gone into understanding the conservation value of second-growth rainforests. However, the primary measuring stick for old-growth/second-growth comparisons is overall community similarity,...

Heritable color polymorphisms have a long history of study in evolutionary biology, though they are less frequently examined today than in the past. These systems, where multiple discrete, visually identifiable color phenotypes co-occur in the same population, are valuable for tracking evolutionary change and ascertaining the relative importance of...

Embryonic development is often a dangerous period of the life cycle for many organisms and embryos are often viewed as helpless. Parental care can help reduce mortality in early life stages but embryonic behavior itself can also be important. To assess the ability of frog embryos to actively hatch in response to environmental cues, we conducted an...

Tobago is a small island on the southeast edge of the Caribbean Plate with a continental flora and fauna. Using DNA sequences from Genbank, new sequences, and morphological data from the snakes Erythrolamprus epinephalus, E. melanotus, E. reginae, and E. zweifeli, the species status of specimens of a Tobago snake previously considered to be Erythro...

We describe two new frog species of the genus Guibemantis Dubois, 1992 (Mantellidae) from northern Madagascar. Both species are placed in the subgenus Pandanusicola Glaw & Vences, 1994 and, like most of their relatives, appear to only inhabit the leaf axils of Pandanus plants. Guibemantis albomaculatus sp. nov. is distinguished from other closely r...

We describe a new frog species of the genus Guibemantis, subgenus Pandanusicola, from Marojejy National Park in northeastern Madagascar. Guibemantis milingilingy, the new species, exhibits high genetic divergence from all other described species of Guibemantis based on DNA sequences of a fragment of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene. This new species...

Color variability influences many aspects of organismal function, such as camouflage, mating displays, and thermoregulation. Coloration patterns frequently vary geographically and sometimes among life stages of the same species. One widely distributed snake species that shows ontogenetic color change is Clelia clelia (Colubridae). No quantitative s...

Losses of adaptations in response to changed selective pressures are evolutionarily important phenomena but relatively few empirical examples have been investigated in detail. To help fill this gap, we took advantage of a natural experiment in which coral snake mimics occur on two nearby tropical islands, one that has coral snake models (Trinidad)...

In recent years, cannibalism has been increasingly documented in larval amphibians and anecdotal observations suggested that tadpoles of Polypedates braueri (Rhacophoridae) exhibit this unusual feeding behavior. To test these observations, we conducted a laboratory experiment where we manipulated both density and food quantity in P. braueri tadpole...

The Neotropical genus Polychrus contains seven species of arboreal lizards. The type species for the genus is the widespread Polychrus marmoratus. We compared a few populations of P. marmoratus using 16S and COI mitochondrial gene sequences (1,035 bp total) and found several lineages existing under the name Polychrus marmoratus. Working backwards,...

Tegus of the genera Tupinambis and Salvator are the largest Neotropical lizards and the most exploited clade of Neotropical reptiles. For three decades more than 34 million tegu skins were in trade, about 1.02 million per year. The genus Tupinambis is distributed in South America east of the Andes, and currently contains four recognized species, th...

Morphological analysis using a cluster analysis (S2A) and PCA (S2B). (PDF)

Elaboration on some nomenclatural issues and illustrated with S3A and S3B Fig. (PDF)

Estimated phylogenies using MrBayes3.2.5. (PDF)

Specimen vouchers and Genbank accession numbers. (PDF)

Morphological data. (PDF)

Amphibians are among the most endangered organisms on Earth; however, few monitoring studies have been conducted in the tropics despite high amphibian diversity in these regions. To help fill this gap, we completed fieldwork to reassess the status of the Bloody Bay Poison Frog (Mannophryne olmonae, an endemic from the island of Tobago), classified...

Since the advent of molecular tools, hybridization has increasingly been recognized as both a common and an evolutionarily important process. Using single nucleotide polymorphism markers from three nuclear genes, we investigated the extent of hybridization between two terrestrial salamanders (Plethodon cinereus and P. electromorphus) at 13 sites in...

Overlapping offspring occurs when eggs are laid in a nest containing offspring from earlier reproduction. Earlier studies showed that the parentage is not always obvious due to difficulties in field observation and/or alternative breeding tactics. To unveil the parentage between overlapping offspring and parents is critical in understanding oviposi...

While geographically widespread, Blanchard’s Cricket Frog (Acris blanchardi) has been declining recently in the northern portions of its range. No cause or causes have yet been definitively associated with this decline and few data are available regarding its current status. To provide data on recent trends in occupancy in the area of decline, we m...

Parental care is widespread among animals and many studies have investigated how environmental conditions influence parental care strategies. However, few studies have coupled observations of the frequency and form of parental care with manipulative studies on the function of care across multiple seasons. To address this gap, we made field observat...

Abstract The presence of Hyalinobatrachium orientale in Tobago and in northeastern Venezuela is puzzling as this species is unknown from the island of Trinidad, an island often hypothesized to be a stepping-stone for the mainland fauna to colonize Tobago. A period of extended isolation on Tobago could result in the Hyalinobatrachium population beco...

Currently, two snake species of the genus Leptophis occur in Trinidad and Tobago. One, L. stimsoni, is endemic to Trini-dad's Northern Range and known from relatively few specimens. The second is the diurnal, arboreal, brightly colored par-rot snake Leptophis coeruleodorsus Oliver. It was originally described based on 23 specimens from Trinidad, To...

Guibemantis bicalcaratus (Boettger, 1913) has been considered as a widespread member of the subgenus Pandanusicola of largely phytotelmic-breeding Malagasy frogs. Based on new collections from its type locality, the Malagasy island Nosy Boraha, and several other localities on Madagascar's east coast, we revise the status of G. bicalcaratus using mo...

We describe a new frog species of the genus Guibemantis in the subgenus Pandanusicola from southeastern Madagascar and provide a redescription of a morphologically similar species, G. pulcher, based on its type series and on newly collected material. The new species, Guibemantis tasifotsy, differs from most Pandanusicola by probably not breeding le...

Palavras-chave: atendimento de ovos, plasticidade na eclosão, Trinidad, Tobago. While relatively few anurans are known to have parental care, the behavioral diversity involved is impressive (reviewed in McDiarmid 1978, Crump 1995, 1996, Lehtinen and Nussbaum 2003). The most common form of anuran parental care is egg attendance (Lehtinen and Nussbau...

Prey may use a variety of strategies to avoid predators, including behavioral modification and inducible defenses. For an inducible defense to evolve, one necessary component is that the defense must be costly; if it is not, then the defense should evolve into one that is always expressed (i.e., a constitutive defense). However, costs of inducible...

Based on morphology, advertisement calls and DNA sequences, we describe two new species of plant-breeding frogs in the genus Guibemantis (subgenus Pandanusicola) from coastal rainforests in southeastern Madagascar. Guibemantis annulatus sp. nov. is most similar to G. punctatus but differs in having a lighter background colour on the dorsum, smaller...

Classic niche partitioning suggests that coexistence among asymmetric competitors is facilitated by differential resource use. Coexistence is also possible, however, when a species only has access to resources that are shared with a competitor, providing it is the superior competitor on that resource (the ‘included niche’). To test predictions of t...

Until recently, morphology has been the predominant basis on which taxonomic decisions have been made. Now, many sources of data inform decisions in taxonomy, yet few studies are available that directly compare the conclusions made on the basis of different datasets. The difficulty of reaching clear taxonomic decisions is further complicated by the...

The mantelline frogs Guibemantis bicalcaratus and G. punctatus were described in 1913 and 1979, respectively, yet little information has previously been available about their biology. These species breed in the water-filled leaf axils of Pandanus or other water-holding plants in the rainforests of eastern Madagascar. I conducted a mark-recapture st...

Twelve wetlands (7 recently restored; 5 reference) in central and southern Minnesota were monitored during the 1998 breeding season to assess colonization of recently restored wetlands by amphibians, compare the amphibian fauna to that of reference wetlands and identify important factors influencing the probability of colonization. Eight amphibian...

Time- and context-dependent nest site selection of a phytotelm-breeding frog (Kurixalus eiffingeri) was evaluated in a natural bamboo habitat in subtropical Taiwan from 2004 to 2005. At the beginning of the breeding season (mid-March), frogs preferred bamboo stumps with large water holding capacity, which may be considered high-quality stumps since...

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) Bd) Bd is a chytrid fungal pathogen of amphibians that has been implicated in numerous amphibian extinctions and declines (Berger et al. 1998; Lips et al. 2006). The geographic distribution of this novel pathogen, however, is poorly known. While a number of reports are available from Africa (Goldberg et al. 2007;...

During recent fieldwork on the island of Tobago, West Indies, we found the tadpole of the critically endangered Bloody Bay poison frog Mannophryne olmonae) and describe it here for the first time. Tadpoles were collected in small rock pools or other depressions adjacent to streams. The tadpole is similar to other dendrobatid larvae in many features...

The emerging infectious disease chytridiomycosis is prevalent in Central and South America, and has caused catastrophic declines of amphibian populations in the Neotropics. The responsible organism, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has been recorded on three West Indian islands, but the whole of the Caribbean region is predicted to offer a suitable...

No previous ecological study has addressed the Critically Endangered (IUCN Red List) Tobago endemic frog Mannophryne olmonae (Aromobatidae) since its initial description in 1983. The species was found in six rivers and 15 first-order streams in northeastern Tobago in 2006. Snout-vent lengths of 126 measured individuals ranged from 9.6-25.7 mm, and...

One group of mantellid frogs from Madagascar (subgenus Pandanusicola of Guibemantis) includes species that complete larval development in the water-filled leaf axils of rainforest plants. This group consists of six described species: G. albolineatus, G. bicalcaratus, G. flavobrunneus, G. liber, G. pulcher, and G. punctatus. We sequenced the 12S and...