This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

In our own juvenile stage, many of us received our wide-eyed introduction to the wonders of nature by watching the metamorphosis of swimming tadpoles into leaping frogs and toads. The recent alarming declines in amphibian populations worldwide and the suitability of amphibians for use in answering research questions in disciplines as diverse as molecular systematics, animal behavior, and evolutionary biology have focused enormous attention on tadpoles. Despite this popular and scientific interest, relatively little is known about these fascinating creatures. In this indispensable reference, leading experts on tadpole biology relate what we currently know about tadpoles and what we might learn from them in the future. Tadpoles provides detailed summaries of tadpole morphology, development, behavior, ecology, and environmental physiology; explores the evolutionary consequences of the tadpole stage; synthesizes available information on their biodiversity; and presents a standardized terminology and an exhaustive literature review of tadpole biology.

This collection of twenty-one papers provides an up-to-date investigation of metamorphosis, particularly in insects and amphibians. The contributors offer a range of fresh insights as they describe the latest research, considering such topics as the morphological and cellular aspects of metamorphosis, the use of mutants to study the control of pattern formation in the adult insect integument at the genetic level, and hormonal control of metamorphosis in insects and amphibians.