earticle

영어

In order to reveal the effect of altitudinal change on Rana dybowskii, we examined the developmental stage of embryos using site-shifting eggs. The developing eggs were collected from two different localities of 269m and 1,114m from the sea level and shifted into three different altitudes (27, 308 and 1,098m). The preliminary results have shown that we have found the tadpoles rather than developing embryos within the egg-clutches in low altitude site (average 25m) but the early-stage embryos have been mostly found in high altitude site rather than tadpoles (average 1,101m). The results from site-shifting experiments we found that the eggs of 27m showed the fastest development procedure and earliest hatching time and those of 1,098m did the slowest development and the latest hatching time. The measurement results of the hatched tadpoles of 269m-eggs from three different altitudes showed that the highly significant differences in the least square means in snout-ventral length (SVL) (P < 0.001), although there is no difference in head width (HW) (P > 0.05). The tadpoles hatched were smaller in higher altitude site. On the other hand, the levels of SVL and HW in 1,114m-eggs were significantly greater in low altitude tadpoles than those from high altitude individuals (P < 0.001). Difference in temperature of air and water with change in altitude might be the influencing factor for embryonic development of R. dybowskii. In conclusion, this study suggested that monitoring of developmental procedure of amphibian plays an important role for understanding the climate change and global warming as they are one of the biological indicators.