Abstract. Anthropogenic disturbances to habitats influence the fitness of individual animals, the abundance of their populations, and the composition of their communities. Wetlands in particular are frequently degraded and destroyed, impacting the animals that inhabit these important ecosystems. The creation of wetlands during and following sand extraction processes is inevitable, and thus, sand quarries have the potential to support aquatic animals. To determine how amphibians utilise these wetlands, I conducted nocturnal call surveys at wetlands within the Kables Sands quarry, New South Wales, Australia, and within surrounding reference wetlands, and quantified levels of developmental instability (DI) as a proxy for fitness. Whilst quarry and reference wetlands were largely similar in terms of environmental characteristics, quarry wetlands consistently harboured more amphibian species and individuals. Using unsigned asymmetry as a measure of DI, frogs from the quarry sites exhibited significantly lower levels of DI compared to reference wetlands, indicating that quarry wetlands may be comparatively higher quality. Levels of DI within quarry wetlands also compared favourably to data from healthy frog populations extracted from the literature. Further enhancing the suitability of quarry wetlands would require minimal effort, with potentially significant increases in local and regional biodiversity. Documenting species presence and quantifying individual fitness by measuring limb lengths is an economically and logistically feasible method to assess the health of quarry wetlands. Overall, the methods outlined here provide a powerful, yet simple, tool to assess the overall health and suitability of quarry wetlands that could be easily adopted at quarries throughout the world.

中文翻译：

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采砂场湿地为本地两栖动物提供优质栖息地

摘要。人为干扰栖息地会影响个体动物的健康状况、种群数量及其群落组成。尤其是湿地经常退化和破坏，影响栖息在这些重要生态系统中的动物。在采砂过程中和之后形成湿地是不可避免的，因此采砂场有可能支持水生动物。为了确定两栖动物如何利用这些湿地，我在澳大利亚新南威尔士州 Kables Sands 采石场内的湿地和周围的参考湿地内进行了夜间呼叫调查，并量化了发育不稳定性 (DI) 的水平作为健康的代理。虽然采石场和参考湿地在环境特征方面大体相似，采石场湿地一直栖息着更多的两栖动物物种和个体。使用无符号不对称性作为 DI 的度量，与参考湿地相比，采石场的青蛙表现出显着较低的 DI 水平，表明采石场湿地的质量可能相对较高。采石场湿地内的 DI 水平也优于从文献中提取的健康青蛙种群数据。进一步提高采石场湿地的适宜性只需要很少的努力，可能会显着增加当地和区域的生物多样性。通过测量肢体长度记录物种存在和量化个体健康是评估采石场湿地健康状况的经济和逻辑上可行的方法。总的来说，这里概述的方法提供了一个强大而简单的