RESUMEN
Species traits provide a strong link between an organism's fitness and processes at community and ecosystem levels. However, such data remain scarce for amphibians in the Neotropics. Colombia is the country with the highest number of threatened amphibians and the second greatest number of amphibian species worldwide. We present a data set containing eight morphological traits for 4,623 museum specimens of the seven largest collections in the country corresponding to 293 species of 14 families. The number of measured specimens per species ranged from 1 to 118 individuals with a median of 8 individuals per species. Overall, this database gathered morphological information for 37.6% of Colombian anuran diversity. Species measured were mainly distributed in the high Andean forest, the páramo, and wetland ecosystems, and was part of a national initiative led by the Instituto Alexander von Humboldt. The morphological traits were selected on the basis of their role in species' responses to environmental variability and their contributions to ecosystem processes. These traits were related to habitat use, (forearm length, tibia length, femur length, foot length, and foot webbing), predation and food chains (head width and mouth width), and nutrient recycling (snout-vent length). We expect this data set will be used in studies on functional diversity in amphibians and the development of conservation planning for these taxa. No copyright or proprietary restrictions are associated with the use of this data set other than citation of this Data Paper.
RESUMEN
Los anfibios, particularmente en sus estados larvales, tienen una gran sensibilidad a la concentración de contaminantes; por lo que se han convertido en una herramienta indicadora para evaluar cómo las diferentes actividades humanas afectan los ecosistemas acuáticos. Debido a esto se utilizaron larvas de anuros como bioindicadores en la zona del medio Dagua, en el corregimiento de Zaragoza, donde la actividad minera ha liberado contaminantes al río Dagua (metales pesados principalmente). Utilizando la técnica de espectrofotometría por absorción atómica de vapor frío se midieron las concentraciones de mercurio total en renacuajos de cinco especies, junto con una muestra de sedimentos para cada muestra animal, como un referente ambiental. La evaluación se realizó en dos zonas con diferente grado de intervención y se reportan rangos de concentración de mercurio que van desde 0,07 hasta 0,24 µg/g y desde 0,07 hasta 0,17 µg/g para la zona de alto impacto y de impacto desconocido respectivamente. Pese a que las concentraciones encontradas no superan límites establecidos por las autoridades ambientales, es evidente que en la zona se desarrollan procesos de bioacumulación, porque las concentraciones en los organismos siempre fueron mayores a las del ambiente, de hecho, significativamente diferentes (M-W Utest, p = 0,001), por lo que se propone la implementación de programas de biomonitoreo y bioremediación en la zona, teniendo en cuenta que los renacuajos son principalmente consumidores de primer orden y al incorporarse en la cadena trófica las cargas contaminantes entrarían en procesos de biomagnificación.
Amphibians, particularly larval stages, are strongly sensitive to pollutants, so they have become useful indicators to assess how different human activities affect ecosystems. In this way, tadpoles were used as bioindicators in the Medio Dagua zone, in Zaragoza town, where mining has released pollutants into the Dagua River (mostly heavy metals). Using spectrophotometry by cold vapor atomic absorption, we measured total mercury concentrations in tadpoles of five species, with a sediment sample for each animal sample as an environment reference. The study was realized in two areas with different intervention levels, we report mercury concentration ranges from 0.07 to 0.24 µg/g for high impact zone and from 0.07 to 0.17µg/g for unknown impact zone, these levels do not exceed set limits used by local environmental authorities, however, is evident that bioaccumulation processes are developing in the area because organisms concentrations were always higher than those of the environment, in fact, significantly different (MW Utest, p = 0.001) therefore we propose the implementation of biomonitoring and bioremediation programs in the area, taking in consideration that tadpoles species used here, were mainly first order consumers, and when their mercury concentrations are incorporated into the food chain, these contaminant loads will produce biomagnification processes.