ABSTRACT
Evolutionary Ecology is at the interception between Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. It is a discipline that allows us to understand how animals evolve and predict how they will evolve. Amphibians constitute the oldest group of the Tetrapods and they present complex life cycles and considerable diversity. Amphibians are currently facing a global decline, so understanding the evolutionary ecology of amphibians is essential to understand their decline and predict the response that amphibians will have to changes in climate, landscape, and water availability. This book aims to establish a compendium of what is known so far about the evolutionary ecology of amphibians. The book is structured, in general, going from basic biological aspects to more complex traits. Chapter 2 is dedicated to amphibian evolution. Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 deal with different aspects of amphibian basic biology such as physiology, immunology, thermoregulation, and hydric balance. Thus, these chapters deal with basic aspects that will be necessary for understanding more complex traits presented in later chapters. Chapters from chapter 7 onwards deal with complex traits, such as body size, locomotion and reproduction. The last three chapters of the book review the three main communication channels used by amphibians: chemical (olfaction), acoustic (sound) and visual (coloration) channels.
