The global decline of amphibian populations is recognized as an early warning sign of problems with various ecosystems. Habitat alteration, climate change, and water quality has been found to affect body condition of the amphibians present in the environs. This study explored the impact of different disturbance gradients on diversity and abundance of the amphibian community within the Zamora Watershed and assessed the impact on the body condition of Pristimantis lymani within these gradients. Amphibian communities were sampled via visual surveys and specimens were manually captured, measured and released at each of the 12 catchments inside the Zamora Watershed. We hope to establish the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance by addressing the following questions. (1) How does the varying levels of anthropogenic disturbance affect the diversity of amphibian communities within the watershed? (2) Do the varying levels of anthropogenic disturbance affect the body condition and abundance of the indicator species P. lymani across land use types?
Results/Conclusions
The results indicate that there is no significant difference in body condition across land use types, on the other hand, the results suggest a significant difference in the abundance and distribution of P.lymani is found between forest and urban land use types, and a negative correlation between the amount of disturbance within land use types and the diversity within the amphibian community. The data does not provide a clear answer regarding our question of whether body condition is affected across the various gradients of anthropogenic disturbance. However, the data supports our assertion that increasing rates of anthropogenic disturbance negatively affects abundance of P. lymani and has a detrimental impact on diversity of amphibian assemblages.