The suppression of natural landscapes has decimated populations and/or reduced the area of occurrence of many anuran amphibian species. This is the scenario of Cerrado, given its great economic potential and the decay speed through human activities. For this reason, species inventories are extremely needed in such regions, where the dispersion activity and reproduction might be beset depending on the degree of environmental alteration. This study aims to determine the richness and the diversity of reproductive modes of the anurofauna from the Tijuco River basin and to compare the composition of the assemblage from such region with assemblages of amphibians previously studied from other regions within the biomes Cerrado and Mesophytic Semideciduous Forest. The study was carried out along the Tijuco River basin in and approximate extension of 80 km. We conduct four sampling methods where 40 species of anurans belonging to six families were registered. This corresponds to 20% of the species of anurans known to Cerrado. The landscape conditions favor species more tolerant and adapted to dry weather, which reflects an assemblage with lower proportions of reproductive modes and higher occurrence of generalized modes, dependent of water or adapted against desiccation. The comparison with 15 different localities revealed that the anurofauna from Cerrado is unique, with low taxonomic similarity to the adjacent ecosystems. The diversity of habitats and the expressive richness of species make the Tijuco River basin very important for the conservation of the anurofauna from the biome Cerrado.
Anura; distribution; modified landscape; community ecology
