Research

Check out some quick writeups of my various research projects.

Click on a title below to read up on one of my research projects. Below, you can also find links to formal research articles related to each project. Also feel free to check out Google Scholar or CV.

Do tadpoles even have lungs?

Yes, and they also suck!

Most tadpoles start breathing air right after hatching, well before they grow legs or leave the water. Breathing air at such tiny sizes is no picnic, however. Tiny tads have to fight relatively giant forces, like surface tension. Read on to learn how they use a special type of air breathing to deal with that.

Relevant research papers

Why lose a lung?

Lungless tadpoles and life in fast water

While most tadpoles have lungs, some definitely don’t. Read on to learn about the crazy habitats where a tadpole might not want to breathe air.

Relevant research papers

Bubble guts

Re-evolution of air breathing in a lungless tadpole

Once lost, lungs have never re-evolved, so far as we know. When I saw a lungless tadpole breathing air in the wild, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then I looked inside…

Relevant research papers

Phillips, JR and MC Womack. (in press). Bubbleguts: re-evolution of air breathing in a lungless tadpole. Ecology.
Phillips, JR, GK Nicolau, SS Ngwenya, EA Jackson, and MC Womack. (2024). Habitat and respiratory strategy effects on hypoxia performance in anuran tadpoles. Integrative and Comparative Biology.

Lost and found in the museum

How a jar of “unidentified” tadpoles became a new genus

No, not like the Ben Stiller movie. A jar of strange tadpoles sat in a museum collection for years before anyone realized what they were looking at. Read on to see how a closer look turned an odd specimen into a brand new genus of frog.

Relevant research papers

Dias, PH, JR Phillips, MO Pereyra, DB Means, A Haas, and PJR Kok. (2024). The remarkable larval morphology of Rhaebo nasicus (Werner, 1903) (Amphibia: Anura: Bufonidae) with the erection of a new bufonid genus and insights into the evolution of suctorial tadpoles. Zoological Letters.