All these factors underline the   importance of tadpole research and at the same time may demonstrate that anuran   larvae are, to a certain extent, the “Achilles’ heel” of amphibians.   Therefore, it is even more surprising that in the past, research on tadpoles   has received less attention than that of adult amphibians (McDiarmid &   Altig 1999). Misidentifications can lead to error cascades and seriously   affect studies in other disciplines, e.g., ecology, physiology, behaviour   (Bortolus 2008). Recently, several studies on tadpole identification have   been conducted using molecular tools alongside morphological data, notably in   Madagascar (Thomas et al. 2005; Raharivololoniainaa et al. 2006;   Randrianiaina et al. 2012). Studies of this kind are still underrepresented   in the Neotropics (but see e.g., Schulze & Jansen 2012, Kolenc et al.   2013) In Brazil, for example, taxonomic studies on amphibians have been   increasing substantially, yielding a current total of about 946 described   frog species (Segalla et al. 2013), but larvae are only known of about 60% of   the species (Provete et al. 2012). In Bolivia, even less is known about the   tadpoles of native species and only about 30% have been described, partly   even from bordering countries. A recent study, however, revealed that hidden   diversity exists on a regional level in the country’s eastern lowlands   (Jansen et al. 2011).

所有这些因素都强调了蝌蚪研究的重要性，同时也可能证明蝌蚪在某种程度上是两栖动物研究的薄弱环节。因此，更令人惊讶的是，过去对蝌蚪的研究比两栖动物成体受到的关注要少（McDiarmid & Altig 1999）。错误的鉴定可能导致在此基础上的一系列学科的研究错误，如生态学、生理学、行为学（Bortolus 2008）。最近，除了形态学数据外，还利用分子工具对蝌蚪的鉴定进行了一些研究，特别是在马达加斯加（Thomas et al. 2005; Raharivololoniainaa et al. 2006; Randrianiaina   et al. 2012）。这类研究在新热带地区仍然缺乏代表性（but see e.g., Schulze & Jansen 2012, Kolenc et al. 2013）例如，在巴西，两栖动物的分类研究大幅增加，目前共有946种蛙类新种被记述（Segalla et al. 2013），但其中只有60%的蝌蚪有明确记载（Provete et al. 2012）。在玻利维亚，对本地物种的蝌蚪的了解甚至更少，只有大约30%的物种被描述过，部分甚至来自邻国。然而，最近的一项研究表明，该国东部低地在区域层面上存在隐藏的多样性（Jansen et al. 2011）。