The effect of urbanisation and local environmental heterogeneity on phenotypic variability of a tropical treefrog

Urbanisation reduces species richness and change community composition. However, little is known on how the phenotype of organisms with low dispersal ability respond to environmental changes associated with urbanisation in fast urbanizing centres, such as those in the Global South.
Here, we tested how urbanisation rate, local environmental heterogeneity, land surface temperature, and spatial gradients affect phenotypic traits associated with dispersal, resource acquisition, and performance, namely: body size, head shape, and leg length of the Dwarf Treefrog (Dendropsophus nanus) using a space-for-time substitution approach.
We took linear measurements from 768 individuals in 21 ponds along an urban gradient in central Brazil. We also measured local environmental variables and summarized them using Hill-Smith Principal Component Analysis. The spatial arrangement of ponds at multiple scales was described using Moran Eigenvector Maps. Those variables were entered into a Structural Equation..., Study site and sampling design
We conducted fieldwork in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, central Brazil (Projection: UTM–21S; Coordinates: 751114, 7731659; DATUM=SIRGAS/2000; 529 m a.s.l.; Figure 2). Campo Grande has been founded 127 years ago (Arruda 2006; PLANURB 2019) and has about 897,938 citizens (IBGE, 2023). Although recent, urbanisation has been fast, with the city gaining ~ 13,000 ha of urban infrastructure from 1985 to 2021 (MRS, pers. obs. based on data from MapBiomas, 2023). The urban area has about 35,903 ha with most human population living in the urban centre (PLANURB, 2019). The climate is Equatorial Savanna or Köppen’s Aw, with dry winters and rainy summers (Kottek et al., 2006). Vegetation is composed mainly by Cerradão, Cerrado, Campo Sujo, and Vereda vegetation types (Ribeiro & Walter, 2008).
We sampled adults of the hylid frog Dendropsophus nanus in 21 ponds (Figure 2; Figure S1) along an urban gradient through surveys at breeding sites (Scott Jr. et al., 1994..., , # The effect of urbanization and local environmental heterogeneity on phenotypic variability of a tropical treefrog

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3xsj3txp2](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3xsj3txp2)

This dataset below contains a series of R code, R Markdown, datasets containing morphological measurements of the Dwarf Treefrog *Dendropsophus nanus*, and local environmental variables collected at the same ponds. Their contents and details are given below:

## Description of the data and file structure

### data\_envir.txt

This is a .txt file in tabular format containing both the local environmental variables measured at each pond, their geographical coordinates (`lat` and `long`), and the landscape-scale variables quantified from the satallite images.

This is a data.frame containing 58 columns by 22 rows. Columns with 0 values represents zero percentage of urbanisation. Below you'll find an explanation for the data in each column

* `ponds` represents the number of ponds sampled in ...