Description of the Tadpole of a Stream Breeding Frog, Rana curtipes

Anuran larvae exhibit diverse and ecologically correlated morphological variations (Duellman and Trueb, 1986; Jennings and Scott, 1993; Kaiser and Altig, 1994; de Sa et al., 1997; Lavilla et al., 1997; Santos et al., 1998). The mountain range called "Western Ghats" in Southern India harbors over 100 species of anurans representing 14 genera (Daniels, 1997a,b,c). However, descriptions of larval morphology of anurans from the Indian subcontinent are scanty (Hiragond and Saidapur, 1999). The larvae of Rana curtipes live in streams and are among the largest anuran tadpoles found in the Western Ghats (Daniels, 1997b) and are poorly described (Rao, 1914; Sekar, 1990). Here we