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Southern Amazonia is one of the less-explored regions by anuran taxonomists. We describe a small new species of snouted treefrog, genus Scinax, from this region, from a fluvial archipelago in the Juruena River, state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. The description is based on external morphology of adults and tadpoles, advertisement call and molecular data. The species is phylogenetically related to other snouted treefrogs of the Scinax cruentomma species group and shows the most southeastern distribution in Amazonia among its close relatives. It is distinguished from congeners mainly by its larger adult body size and bilobate vocal sac that reaches the level of the pectoral fold, a reddish-brown horizontal stripe on the iris, dark melanophores or blotches on the vocal sac and the throat of females, and the uniformly brown posterior portion of the thigh. The advertisement call comprises one pulsed note emitted at regular intervals, with a duration of 189-227 ms, 30-35 pulses/note and a dominant frequency of 2,250-2,344 Hz. The type locality is suffering several environmental impacts, including illegal mining, overfishing, unsustainable agriculture, uncontrolled logging and degradation associated with the construction of new hydroelectric dams. Further study of the biology and regional distribution of the new species is required to propose mitigation measures needed for its conservation., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Ferrão et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The Indian Purple frog, Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis, occupies a basal phylogenetic position among neobatrachian anurans and has a very unusual life history. Tadpoles have a large ventral oral sucker, which they use to cling to rocks in torrents, whereas metamorphs possess adaptations for life underground. The developmental changes that underlie these shifts in habits and habitats, and especially the internal remodeling of the cranial and postcranial skeleton, are unknown. Using a nearly complete metamorphic series from free-living larva to metamorph, we describe the postembryonic skeletal ontogeny of this ancient and unique monotypic lineage. The torrent-dwelling larva possesses a dorsoventrally flattened body and a head with tiny dorsal eyes, robust lower and upper jaw cartilages, well-developed trabecular horns, and a definable gap between the trabecular horns and the tip of the snout. Unlike tadpoles of many other frogs, those of Nasikabatrachus retain larval mouthparts into late metamorphic stages. This unusual feature enables the larvae to maintain their clinging habit until near the end of metamorphosis. The subsequent ontogenetic shift from clinging to digging is correlated with rapid morphological changes and behavioral modifications. Metamorphs are equipped with a shortened tibiafibula and ossified prehallical elements, which likely facilitate initial digging using the hind limbs. Subsequently, the frogs may shift to headfirst burrowing by using the wedge-shaped skull, anteriorly positioned pectoral girdle, well-developed humeral crests and spatula-shaped forelimbs. The transition from an aquatic life in torrents to a terrestrial life underground entails dramatic changes in skeletal morphology and function that represent an extreme in metamorphic remodeling. Our analysis enhances the scope for detailed comparative studies across anurans, a group renowned for the diversity of its life history strategies.

Electronic annotation of scientific data is very similar to annotation of documents. Both types of annotation amplify the original object, add related knowledge to it, and dispute or support assertions in it. In each case, annotation is a framework for discourse about the original object, and, in each case, an annotation needs to clearly identify its scope and its own terminology. However, electronic annotation of data differs from annotation of documents: the content of the annotations, including expectations and supporting evidence, is more often shared among members of networks. Any consequent actions taken by the holders of the annotated data could be shared as well. But even those current annotation systems that admit data as their subject often make it difficult or impossible to annotate at fine-enough granularity to use the results in this way for data quality control. We address these kinds of issues by offering simple extensions to an existing annotation ontology and describe how the results support an interest-based distribution of annotations. We are using the result to design and deploy a platform that supports annotation services overlaid on networks of distributed data, with particular application to data quality control. Our initial instance supports a set of natural science collection metadata services. An important application is the support for data quality control and provision of missing data. A previous proof of concept demonstrated such use based on data annotations modeled with XML-Schema.