The Direct-developing Frog Eleutherodactylus johnstonei: A Promising but Underused Amphibian Model for Ecological Risk Assessment

Abstract

Although considered a globally declining vertebrate taxon, amphibians are often ignored and replaced in ecological risk assessments by surrogate species from other vertebrate groups with striking biological disparities (e.g., fish or birds and mammals for aquatic and terrestrial forms, respectively). This mismatched surrogacy may introduce strong biases in assessing environmental risk for amphibians. A great deal of variation in amphibian life history and morphology further challenges efforts to identify a candidate amphibian model species to represent the whole group in ecological risk assessment. Here we provide an overview of the relative sensitivity of the direct-developing frog Eleutherodactylus johnstonei to chemical and physical stressors in the context of amphibian risk assessment. To achieve this goal, this chapter is divided into three sections exploring the role of this species in ecotoxicology—pesticide toxicity, chemical cyto-genotoxicity, and ultraviolet radiation cyto-genotoxicity—based on existing and novel data. The outcome of this chapter reflects that E. johnstonei represents a promising yet underused model to be used at different screening levels in ecotoxicology. We hope the overview presented in this chapter will encourage other researchers to capitalize on the enormous potential of this species in ecological risk assessment.