In a previous time, it was a bit more tedious and difficult to keep track of the world’s species, and international collaboration was less than instantaneous. This recent endeavor, presented by the Digital Library Project at Berkeley and a host of supporting organizations, aims to provide the general public and scientists with a place to retrieve information related to amphibian biology and conservation. Currently, AmphibiaWeb contains material on 1265 species, along with 1173 distribution maps, 3449 literature references, 140 sound files, and 7188 photographs. With all this information, it helps to have a well thought out search engine, and a finding aid is available here as well. The database can be searched by genus, species, vernacular name, family, order, country, reason for population decline, and so on. The more casual visitor will also want to visit the more general “About Amphibians” section, then glide on over to the “Calls and Video” area. Here, one can look and listen to a number of creatures, including the call of the Aplastodiscus leucopygius, a type of Brazilian tree frog which sounds a bit like the warning signal emitted by a service vehicle backing into a dock.
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