Amphibian Biodiversity and Distribution Changes From the Paleozoic in China

Vertically exploring the animals’ biodiversity and distribution change trajectories and horizontally demonstrating their association with the existing floral structures are critically required to integrally analyze their biodiversity changes and predict their future survival trends. Here, we study the distribution of amphibian fossils since the Paleozoic and their extant taxa in China. They have been regarded as very sensitive to environmental changes and ecologically fragile. We also explore their association with vascular and nonvascular plants. The results indicate that amphibians appeared in the Late Paleozoic in Northern China, currently Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu, and Henan provinces. Their dispersion and radiation during the Mesozoic period were from three isolated centers. A future development during the Cenozoic was toward South and Southwest China. Southwest and coastal regions are major biodiversity-bearing areas, corresponding to abundant vascular and nonvascular floral structures. They, however, rely more on vascular plants that present the most extraordinary biodiversity index and the most outstanding national repositories in Southwest China. Thus, the conservation strategies for amphibians in China must prioritize the region, especially Yunnan and Sichuan, as well as the coastal region. Avoiding further human disruption is a conservation policy in the central region, and less investment in the northwest and northeast, where amphibian biodiversity and distribution have met a bottleneck due to further desertification of the environment and ecology.