Lowland extirpation of anuran populations on a tropical mountain

Background Climate change and infectious diseases threaten animal and plant species, even in natural and protected areas. To cope with these changes, species may acclimate, adapt, move or decline. Here, we test for shifts in anuran distributions in the Luquillo Mountains (LM), a tropical montane forest in Puerto Rico by comparing species distributions from historical (1931–1989)and current data (2015/2016). Methods Historical data, which included different methodologies, were gathered through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and published literature, and the current data were collected using acoustic recorders along three elevational transects. Results In the recordings, we detected the 12 native frog species known to occur in LM. Over a span of ∼25 years, two species have become extinct and four species suffered extirpation in lowland areas. As a consequence, low elevation areas in the LM (