Amphibian Species of the World 5.1, an Online Reference

How to use

The Amphibian Species of the World database has two searching tools, a BROWSE table (on the right) and a SEARCH table (on the left top). In addition, all underlined author names, dates, and publications may be "clicked through" to see other records citing this author, date, or publication.

BROWSE Table (on the right): Click through any name for the taxon record. At the bottom of each record will be listed subsidiary taxa that can also be clicked. All underlined author, date, and citation lines will take you to all other records with the same entry(s).

SEARCH table (on the left): The search table has 10 fields which can be used singly or in concert to search for relevant taxonomic records. For instance, should one want to search on Eleutherodactylus of Brazil, Eleutherodactylus should be typed into the Genus box and Brazil selected in the Country/U.S. state sliding table. The database will produce a listing of all species of Eleutherodactylus known (or strongly suspected) from Brazil.

Taxon: Taxonomic names (e.g., Bufonidae or Ollotis nebulifer) or parts of taxonomic names (e.g., idae or nebulifer [minimum of three letters]) can be entered in this box and searched on. The database will return all records in which the active taxonomic name or synonym meets this criterion. By typing in the name of the overarching taxon (e.g., Anura, Salamandridae, or Eleutherodactylus) the search on other categories (e.g., year of publication) will be constrained to that taxonomic group.

Author/Authority in synonymy: By entering the surname of an author all new scientific names or combinations associated with that author will be retrieved.

Year of publication in synonymy: By entering a year of publication all new names and new combinations published in that year will be retrieved.

Country/U.S. state: The sliding table allows the user to pick a specific country (e.g., Angola) or U.S. state (e.g., United States of America-Wyoming) and search on that term. All relevant records will be returned. The taxa listed in the reports do not necessarily conform to a list of countries from which carefully identified vouchers have been deposited in museums. The taxa listed conform, instead, to my (DRF) educated guess on what taxa are expected to occur within that national boundary.

Keywords in distribution: This category allows the user to type in a word or words to be found in the Distribution line in the record. Multiple words will find all records for which any of the words appear, so in this case less is more.

Keywords in comment: This category allows the user to type in a word or words (e.g., Duellman or AMNH) that appear in the comment line. Words other than scientific names will also be searched in the synonymy lines (e.g., lectotype).