Amphibian Species of the World 5.3, an Online Reference

History of "Amphibian Species of the World"

In 1978, Stephen R. Edwards, Executive Director of the Association of Systematics Collections (ASC; now Natural Science Collections Alliance [NSCOLL]), initiated a program to develop high-quality taxonomic catalogs in response to the needs of CITES (Convention on Trade In Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora).Under his direction, the first volume produced was Mammal Species of the World (J.H. Honacki, K.E. Kinman, and J.W. Koeppel, eds., 1982, ASC/Allen Press).

In late 1980, the second of these projects, Amphibian Species of the World, was initiated by Edwards. Living Amphibia was selected largely because Richard G. Zweifel (AMNH) had provided ASC with a listing of the names of currently recognized species and because of availability of on-site expertise at the University of Kansas in the persons of William E. Duellman, Linda Trueb, and their students (including, at the time, Jonathan Campbell, David Cannatella, Sushil Dutta, Linda Ford, Darrel Frost, David Hillis, and Rafael Joglar). Darrel Frost, then a PhD student of Duellman's, was hired to manage and develop this project as compiler and editor, which was to be a joint effort of him and an international team of collaborators, under the direction of a steering committee of the World Congress of Herpetology. That steering committee was composed of William Duellman (Chair), Robert C. Drewes, Alice G.C. Grandison, Carl Gans, and Marinus Hoogmoed. In June, 1981, this committee (except for M. Hoogmoed who was unable to attend) met with Frost at the annual convention of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH) in Corvallis, Oregon, USA, to discuss strategies and appropriate workers to be approached for collaboration. From that meeting followed nearly four years of intensive work by Frost and collaborators, culminating in the publication of Amphibian Species of the World in 1985 (D.R. Frost, ed., Assoc. System. Collect./Allen Press).

Frost was assigned subsequently to develop Turtle and Crocodilian Species of the World. But, in 1986, when Frost opted to return to his graduate studies to complete his PhD, the turtle project was transferred to F. Wayne King (Florida State Museum, University of Florida). (Frost was retained by ASC part-time to oversee the coordination of ongoing catalog projects.) That same year, at the direction of the ASC Board, Stephen R. Edwards moved ASC to Washington, D.C., and left the organization shortly thereafter to become Executive Director of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Gland, Switzerland. A year later, in 1987, Amphibian Species of the World was adopted by the Parties of CITES at the Ottawa meeting as the official classification for purposes of CITES regulation. Subsequent to publication of the volume, to assure continuity of updating while Frost was finishing his postgraduate program, at the direction of ASC a committee was formed by the World Congress of Herpetology, chaired by William E. Duellman (committee members: L.J. Borkin, U. Caramaschi, A. Dubois, M.H. Hoogmoed, R. Laurent, J.L. Perret, J.C. Poyton, J.M. Savage, M.J. Tyler, and E. Zhao, and R.G. Zweifel). Results of this committee's activity were included in a summary of addenda and corrigenda published independently of the World Congress of Herpetology, ASC, or the Herpetologists' League by W.E. Duellman (1993, Spec. Publ. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 21) and subsequently adopted by CITES.

Subsequent to Edwards' relocation in 1987 to Switzerland (IUCN), the Association of Systematics Collections acquired a new direction mandated by the ASC Board. No new catalogs were to be developed within the ASC structure. Therefore, in 1989 the copyright for Mammal Species of the World (1982) was transferred by ASC to the American Society of Mammalogists and the copyright for Amphibian Species of the World (1985) was transferred to the Herpetologists' League, which formed a Checklist Committee (R.W. McDiarmid, Chair, D.R. Frost, and J.M. Savage) to coordinate development of these catalogues. Following Frost's appointment as a curator in 1990 at the American Museum of Natural History, Frost reassumed the development of the amphibian catalogue into something much more useful for professional herpetologists than the original volume. Since that time the catalogue has changed substantially, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Frost completed synonymies (including the literature source of the synonymy) which did not exist in the original volume (or, for the most part, elsewhere), reformatted all records, added the amphibian species described since 1985, made extensive corrections, added English names, and enormously expanded citations to and abstracts of relevant taxonomic literature, as well as (not shown on web site) formulated a complete bibliography (currently containing over 10400 references with cross-indices to taxa referenced) so that publication citations and dates can be easily corrected and standardized. This complete bibliography will be included with the intended printed version of this catalog. There is now little similarity between the 1985 work and what exists in 2009 other than they both address amphibian taxonomy. What has remained the same is that the catalog has always tracked the state of current taxonomic literature and the state of evidence.

This online catalogue is a work in progress. It cannot be complete because our understanding of amphibian biodiversity is ever-changing. Nevertheless, it is useful for professionals both to provide needed information for research and conservation needs and to help illuminate where geographical data or taxonomic information are woefully inadequate. As the end of the project comes more and more into view it is clear that the effort needed to apprehend each bit of data becomes increasing difficult to obtain. Indeed, just keeping up with new descriptions and revisions requires considerable work, especially when one realizes that 46.5% of the amphibian species recognized in 2008 (6347) were not yet recognized in 1985 (4014). For this reason, I have come to the conclusion that treating this as a continuing work is the only reasonable and responsible position to take.

— Darrel R. Frost