DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dc25r
title: Data from: Localized hotspots drive continental geography of abnormal amphibians on U.S. wildlife refuges

description: Amphibians with missing, misshapen, and extra limbs have garnered public
 and scientific attention for two decades, yet the extent of the phenomenon
 remains poorly understood. Despite progress in identifying the causes of
 abnormalities in some regions, a lack of knowledge about their broader
 spatial distribution and temporal dynamics has hindered efforts to
 understand their implications for amphibian population declines and
 environmental quality. To address this data gap, we conducted a
 nationwide, 10-year assessment of 62,947 amphibians on U.S. National
 Wildlife Refuges. Analysis of a core dataset of 48,081 individuals
 revealed that consistent with expected background frequencies, an average
 of 2% were abnormal, but abnormalities exhibited marked spatial variation
 with a maximum prevalence of 40%. Variance partitioning analysis
 demonstrated that factors associated with space (rather than species or
 year sampled) captured 97% of the variation in abnormalities, and the
 amount of partitioned variance decreased with increasing spatial scale
 (from site to refuge to region). Consistent with this, abnormalities
 occurred in local to regional hotspots, clustering at scales of tens to
 hundreds of kilometers. We detected such hotspot clusters of
 high-abnormality sites in the Mississippi River Valley, California, and
 Alaska. Abnormality frequency was more variable within than outside of
 hotspot clusters. This is consistent with dynamic phenomena such as
 disturbance or natural enemies (pathogens or predators), whereas
 similarity of abnormality frequencies at scales of tens to hundreds of
 kilometers suggests involvement of factors that are spatially consistent
 at a regional scale. Our characterization of the spatial and temporal
 variation inherent in continent-wide amphibian abnormalities demonstrates
 the disproportionate contribution of local factors in predicting hotspots,
 and the episodic nature of their occurrence.
description: Frog
 InformationFile Information The
 Frog.csv data set includes information on each of the 68,359 individual
 amphibians surveyed for this effort. Information on data in each column is
 in the ReadMe file.Frog.csvBlank Data Sheets Used For ProjectThis excel file contains multiple tabs so that users may print the data sheets we used for the project. Additional information on how to use the sheets to collect data is included in our Field SOPs document.DataCollectionForms.xlsAbnormality Classification Standard Operating ProceduresThis file describes how abnormalities were classified for analysis, all data files use information that relied on these methods for abnormality classification.AbnormalityClassificationSOP.pdfUSFWS Field Standard Operating ProceduresThis document describes how data were collected for the project.USFWS_Field_SOPs.pdfSOP Revisions in 2011Limited changes were made to the field Standard Operating Procedures document in 2011. Some of these changes incorporated lessons learned during the project; we are therefore sharing them in case they are useful to researchers in the future.SOP_changes_2011.pdfAll CollectionsFile Information The All_Collections.csv data set includes information on each of the 1,477 individual collection events included in this effort. Information on each column is included in the ReadMe file.AllCollections.csvCore DatasetFile Information The Core_Dataset.csv file includes information on the 675 collection events included in most statistical analyses presented in our PLoS One paper. See methods section of the paper for the steps by which we created the "Core Dataset" from the "All_Collections" dataset. Information on each column is included in the ReadMe file.CoreDataset.csvSiteFile Information---This file contains information on all sites at which at least one frog was examined for this survey.SpeciesNamesThis is a link file from the species codes used in the other data files to the scientific and common names for each species.