Morphological Characterization and Classification of Anuran Tadpoles in Korea

The tadpoles of 12 Korean anuran species, including Bombina orientalis, Bufo gargarizans, B. stejnegeri, Hyla japonica, Kaloula borealis, Rana dybowskii, R. huanrenensis, R. coreana, R. nigromaculata, R. chosenica, R. rugosa, and R. catesbeiana, were classified based on their morphological characteristics. We collected eggs or tadpoles of the 12 Korean anuran species from Gangwon, Incheon, Chungcheong, and Gyeonggi districts in 2005 and 2006 breeding seasons. When the tadpoles reached at $27{\sim}37$ Gosner's developmental stages, we described morphological characteristics of the tadpoles of each anuran species and measured their physical parameters such as total length, body length, and body mass. After that, we chose 12 morphological characteristics to identify each species and to use them as classification keys such as eye location, caudal musculature pattern, spiracle location, oral disc morphology, and labial tooth row formula. In this paper, we presented classification keys, morphological characteristics, and drawings for the tadpoles of 12 anuran species.