Comunidades de anfíbios anuros em duas fitofisionomias do Parque Estadual da Serra do Tabuleiro, estado de Santa Catarina

Abstract

The state of Santa Catarina was previously entirely covered by Atlantic Forest, one of the global hotsposts. Even with increasing information on amphibians in the state, there is a wide gap of knowledge on this group even in protected areas. Serra do Tabuleiro State Park is the largest strict use conservation unit of Santa Catarina state, but it has severous anthropogenic threats and pressures. The aims this study were to know anurans community in two vegetations types, restinga and rainforest, at Serra do Tabuleiro State Park, to examine the differences in community parameters between three restinga mesohabitats, to understand to extent some structural environmental variables affect richness and abundance of frogs at restinga and rainforest, to inventory the leaf-litter frogs in rainforest, and, to review the current knowledge about leaf-litter frogs in the world. Anurans in the park were sampled using active search in transects, pittfall traps and large plots on forest floor, during three consecutive years, sampled once every three months from july 2007 to April 2010. Structural variables were measured at sampling sites while climatic data were obtained from nearest meteorological station of study area. A review of leaf-litter frogs in the world was performed by searching the database ISI Web of Science between 1945 and 2008. We recorded 39 species of frogs at Serra do Tabuleiro State Park, including 15 species in restinga area, 31 species in rainforest and the community of leaf-litter frogs was composed of 13 species. In total, 66% of frogs recorded in the park here were endemic to Atlantic forest, 17% owned distribution restricted to Santa Catarina state and four species were considered vulnerable in the list of endangered species of Santa Catarina State. At restinga, open area and restinga forest were most dissimilar in frogs species composition and habitat variables. At the rainforest, canopy cover and number of water bodies were the most important variables related to richness and abundance of frogs. The leaf-litter frogs community in the park, canopy cover, humidity and litter depth were important variables to explain frogs richness and abundance. Current knowledge of leaf-litter frogs in the world is concentrated in tropical regions, while Brazil has the largest number of studies. Some trends for leaf-litter frogs communities could be identified, but futher studies are needed to allow more inference. This study filled some knowledge gaps on biodiversity of frogs in the State of Santa Catarina and particularly in Serra do Tabuleiro State Park.