Abstract:Environment factors affect many larval amphibian traits, including larval growth, development, and time to metamorphosis. Temperature is found to be a key factor in the growth larval among all the environment factors. To uncover the effect of temperature on tadpole growth of Microhyla fissipes, adults M. fissipes collected from Shuangliu, Chengdu, China (30°34′57″N, 103°50′38″E) were used in this work and induced breeding with Luteinizing Hormone Releasing Hormone analogue hormones (LHRHa, dosage: 0.3 μg/g body weight) in laboratory. Forty-five full-sib family tadpoles of stage 28 (stages according to Wang et al. 2017) were randomly and averagely divided into three groups and raised at water temperature (WT) 25 ℃, 28 ℃ and 30 ℃, respectively. Five morphological measurements (Fig. 1) including total length (TOL), body width (BW), interocular space (IOS), snout length (SL) and snout-vent length (SVL) were measured by a stereo microscope with Mshot Image Analysis system (Mc50-N). We used one-way ANOVA and DUNCAN test to analyze the data by the sigmaplot 13.0 software. The growth rate β (%) = (the ending data-beginning data) / beginning data × 100%. Descriptive statistics was presented as mean ± standard error, and the significance level was set at P < 0.05. The results showed that the five measured morphological characters had similar growth trend, of which TOL could be the dominant character to indicate the growth of tadpoles (Fig. 2). The TOL indicated that tadpoles under 25 ℃ grew slowest but presented quickening growth trend after 21 d; tadpoles under 30 ℃ grew fastest but presented slower growth trend after 12 d, and 5 tadpoles were died before end of feeding 28 d; tadpoles under 28 ℃ grew continuously fast and the TOL is longer than those under 30 ℃ at 28 d, also presented quickening growth trend after 21 d, which higher than that under 25 ℃ (Table 1). So, it could be concluded that the survival ratio of tadpoles under 30 ℃ decreased, tadpoles grow slower under 25 ℃, and 28 ℃ is the best feeding temperature for tadpoles of M. fissipes.