Investigation of the demographic parameters of di̇fferent populations of the species pelodytes caucasicus

The Caucasian frog (Pelodytes caucasicus) is a tailless frog species endemic to the Western Caucasus. It is in the NT (Near Thereated) category in the IUCN's Red List and has reported the necessity of keeping the populations under observation. In addition, many populations of P. caucasicus show a decreasing trend. It shows distribution in the provinces of Trabzon, Rize, Giresun and Artvin in Turkey. In this study, it was aimed to examine the effect of habitat differences on demographic parameters and morphological characters of P. caucasicus species. For this purpose, a total of 66 individuals (6 females, 60 males) from the Karagöl (Artvin), Çat (Rize), Hıdırnebi (Trabzon) and Cımbırtlık (Giresun) localities belonging to the P. caucasicus species with different morphological parameters (SVL, HL, HW, NL, TL and FL) and age structure were examined comparatively. In this respect, morphological differences between individuals were determined using the One-Way Anova, Kruskal Wallis, Tukey and Mann Whitney U test. PCA and LDA tests were also used to differentiate the populations in terms of morphological characters. According to Kruskal Wallis and Anova tests, there were differences between the groups in terms of SVL, HW, NL, FL and TL characters. Çat (Rize) individuals have the smallest value in all morphological characters except NL value and there is a statistically significant difference between other groups. While there was no significant difference in any morphological parameter between the Cımbırtlık (Giresun) and Hıdırnebi (Trabzon) populations, these populations showed a nested pattern in PCA and LDA analyses. In terms of age structure, the smallest age was determined in the Cımbırtlık (Giresun) population, and a significant difference was found between Çat (Rize) and Hıdırnebi (Trabzon). The Çat (Rize) and Cımbırtlık (Giresun) populations of P. caucasicus species, which have low tolerance for habitat variability, are distinguished from the others in terms of SVL and age structure. As a result, since these two populations are locations where anthropogenic effects are intense, these differences are thought to be a result of habitat destruction due to human effects.