A Study On The Morphological Geographic Variation Of The Black Spotted Frog

The black spotted frog (Pelophylax nigromaculata) is a widespread species on the land of China. The growth and development of its body morphology usually show regional differences when facing with a variety of geomorphological environments and climate conditions. For widespread species, they adapt to the environment via having different shapes. Phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation are the strategy to result in the differeces of phenotype, and they have close relationship. Literatures have pointed out that the black spotted frog did exist local adaptations on the morphological phenotypes. But there is no evidence to support whether phenotypic plasticity do some effections to the morphological phenotypes in different environments.This study focused on 18 body measurement indicators of 281 frogs which captured from 11 geographical climate regions, made relative indexes by dividing its Snout-vent length(Ls-v), calculated and analyzed the differences of the morphological phenotypes between different regions. The study selected the habitat type index to measure the habitat complexity, and the standard deviation of the morphological indexes as a form of indicators of the phenotypic variation, then analyzed the relationship between the morphological indexes and the habitat complexity by taking linear regression analysis.The results showed that there were extensive geographical variations of the black spotted frog’s body morphology, mutation methods were related to evolution, and also related to the habitat conditions. It indicated that both local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity were the factors contributing to the habitat type indexes. There were significant differences of the indexes related to predation ability among different environment, but no significant differences of the indexes related to athletic ability. There was a directly proportional relationship between the phenotypic plasticity and the diversity of habitat types.