. The biology of the amphibia. Amphibians. THE INTEGUMENT 153 wings of certain butterflies, in attracting the attention of the enemy toward them and away from the more essential head region of the frog. Such speculations afford interesting hypothe- ses to be critically studied by field students. All the intermedi- ates between eyelike spots and black inguinal blotches exist among these frogs. The frequency with which these eye spots are repeated in unrelated groups gives the impression that they must have some important, even though still unknown, function. Parallelism in the develop- ment of
. The biology of the amphibia. Amphibians. THE INTEGUMENT 153 wings of certain butterflies, in attracting the attention of the enemy toward them and away from the more essential head region of the frog. Such speculations afford interesting hypothe- ses to be critically studied by field students. All the intermedi- ates between eyelike spots and black inguinal blotches exist among these frogs. The frequency with which these eye spots are repeated in unrelated groups gives the impression that they must have some important, even though still unknown, function. Parallelism in the develop- ment of color pattern is a frequent phenomenon in Amphibia. Plethodon glutin- osus and Ambystoma jefferson- ianum resemble each other so closely that they are often confused. Various species of Hyla, Polypedates, and Leptopelis have almost iden- tical patterns. If convergent evolution due to mimicry is assumed to account for the first-mentioned Species One tipus ocellatus resembles a face directed . - , , . ' posteriorly. Eye spots occur in various might ask Why does the Same unrelated groups of Salientia. pattern appear in Aneides flavipunctatus of the West Coast. It seems far more likely that the integument of Amphibia is limited in the number of possible patterns which it is able to assume and hence the repetition of various patterns during evolution. It has been sometimes assumed that color patterns serve as recognition marks in the various groups of vertebrates. As most Amphibia lead solitary lives except during the breeding season, such marks would function only during a short period. The bright colors of the males of some newts may serve to attract the attention of the females, but mechanisms other than color pattern function in sex recognition of most Amphibia. References Adams, A. E., and Leah Richards, 1929: The effect of thyroidectomy in Triturus viridescens, Anal. Rec, XLIV, Fig. 59.—The color pattern of Man-. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookpublishernewyorkmcgr, booksubjectamphibians
