Skeletal Learn Method Qinling Area Long Anal Frog (feirana Quadrana) Life History Characteristics

The life-history traits of Feirana quadrana in Tsingling Mountain was studied by skeletochronology.A life history is sequence and timing of events that occur between birth and death.It is the specific way that organisms survive through long-time evolution by adaption. The various life histories of all the species have some common traits, such as body size at birth, growth pattern, age and body size at sexual maturity, number, body size and sex ratio of springs, mortality of population and longevity, etc. And by comparing these life-history traits among species their similarity and differences will be revealed; by associating with the environmental condition of their habitats, the adaption of the organism could be probed; and by associating with the species evolutionary status, the significance of types and sub-types of life histories in the surviving contest beneath the press of natural selection could be discussed, which is the key to understand the course of evolution.The major obstacle to investigate the life-history traits is to determinate the age. Along with the body growth bones and other hard tissues of ectotherms grow with "lines of time", which are called annual lines or the lines of arrested growth. On this principle, by observing the annual lines of bone transactions determination of individual's age can be achieved. Other information, such as the age of sexual maturity can also be obtained as long as acknowledging that the pattern of annual lines of bone transactions reflects the growth pattern of an individual.The data used in this thesis come from 98 Feirana quadrana which were collected during 2008～2009, from Ningshan, Zhouzhi and Ningqian,3 counties in Tsinling Mountain. Their phalanges and some other long bones were processed for paraffin embedding, and 47 samples' cross sections were obtained eventually. Then combining these skeletochronological data with biology data, such as body length, sex, morpha and ecological data, such as the collecting site and date, we established the connection and comparison between each parameter, either intuitionally or statistically in order to reveal the life-history traits of Feirana quadrana, and meanwhile, to examine the reliability of skeletochronology used on this species.Through observation, we found that Feirana quadrana had a great diversity in morphas and the second sex characters, supra-anal glands around the male's anals, only appear among frogs with a specific type of morpha, which was prone to male and low latitude and low altitude sites.By skeletochronology, we found that age and body size were positively correlated. There was sexual dimorphism in growth, for comparing with the male, the female had a greater growth rate in the beginning, bigger body size at every age class and longer lifespan.Age at sexual maturity varied in individual and between sexes, for the female sexually matured at 3 years old on the average while the male at 2 years old on the average. Frogs in sites with the higher latitude and altitude matured later and had longer lifespan than peers in sites with the lower latitude and altitude.The longevity of Feirana quadrana in this investigation is 12 years old.