Sampling Biodiversity in Bornean Frogs

Abstract

Analysis of biodiversity is attracting increasing interest within
the public arena, with many articles appearing in newspapers and popular
magazines. This change is understandable because of the relationship of
biodiversity to conservation in an increasingly stressed global environment.
There is equal interest in biodiversity and related issues in scientific circles
because of their relationship to questions in ecology, evolutionary biology,
and conservation biology. The term biodiversity is often used as though it
meant only the numbers of species (species richness), but the diversity of life
is much more complex than that.
The scientific literature on biodiversity is centered on three main
subjects: lists of species occurring in a small region, comparisons of the
species occurring in different environments within a region, and comparisons
of the species occurring in different regions. Unfortunately, the scientific
literature on biodiversity is frequently marred by errors in sampling.
This paper will illustrate some aspects of biodiversity drawing upon work
on the frogs of Borneo. My studies of the frogs of Borneo were designed to
explore local and regional diversity, the impact of environmental differences
on regional diversity, and the variation between species in the patterns of life
cycles. Examples of these aspects of biodiversity are given.