About the Site

This site was created by a biologist and lecturer at a classical university, primarily to support online the courses taught by its creator. After a year of site development, it was decided that it would now have two authors. In addition to the site creator, who signs here as D.Sh., M_K will also take an active part in developing this resource. The site name, “Batrachos,” is the Greek word for frogs; among other things, it gave rise to the name batrachology, the science of amphibians. Aristotle already used the name “batrachos” when referring to green frogs. Why so much attention to green frogs? They are not only an object of study for the site authors and a group whose investigation will still bring many surprises. Frogs are also a stable metaphor for a model object in the study of biology. This site was created to host materials related to the authors’ courses, primarily vertebrate zoology in general (and batrachology in particular), as well as general ecology. The authors hope that the materials presented here will be useful not only for students attending their courses, but also for those studying at other universities and for other interested readers. In 2004-2009, D.Sh. collaborated with the legendary Russian magazine “Computerra,” and in the final years of the magazine’s existence was one of its columnists (author of a personal column). This work ended when the print edition of “Computerra” ceased publication. Since 2011, D.Sh. has been a columnist for “Computerra Online,” the web edition. The “Blog” section contains a retrospective of publications from print Computerra and, with a slight delay, copies columns from “Computerra Online.” This site is created by its authors on their own initiative and under their own responsibility. Please keep the following in mind when evaluating the site and its materials: the site’s strengths reflect the strengths of the teaching style implemented by lecturers of the Faculty of Biology at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (including the site authors). The site’s shortcomings are the authors’ unfinished work, errors, or missteps, primarily those of Associate Professor Dmytro Andriiovych Shabanov (D.Sh.) of the Department of Zoology and Animal Ecology, and to a lesser extent Senior Lecturer Maryna Oleksandrivna Kravchenko (M.K.) of the same department. The department, faculty, and university, as well as individual colleagues of the authors, bear no responsibility for this site’s shortcomings. This is not just a figure of speech: every person is a product of the social environment in which they developed, but no one can fully embody all of that environment’s properties and merits. The site hosts both material created by its authors and sources whose copyrights belong to other people. Ukrainian law allows the use of copyrighted material in the educational process. Both digital copies of books in the virtual library and fragments of films (and possibly, over time, complete films) used on this site are intended for teaching and are shown to students without charging any fee. It should be emphasized that an image of a book, for example in DJVU format, hosted on the site is not equivalent to the book itself, smelling of fresh printing ink and sold in a store. A film fragment or even a full film in screen resolution presented in the teaching video library is not equivalent to its collector’s DVD edition sold in elegant gift packaging. The site authors are convinced that by providing introductory access to these materials they do not infringe the property rights of their right holders. If anyone can substantiate that they hold copyright to material presented on the site and requests that this material be removed, the request will be fulfilled as quickly as possible. The authors organize their courses so that visiting this site is not mandatory for students, but is useful for them. Practice shows that the overwhelming majority of students go online every day and communicate in social networks. Even information about events connected with the taught courses is distributed through the internet. Therefore, the materials presented on this site will be accessible to most students. Those who do not have internet access will either learn what they need through classmates, or simply do without the information presented here (and there will be nothing irreparable in that). In creating the site, the authors received help from many people. Olha Krasnikova and Olena Usova participated in discussing the site design. The site design uses a drawing by Yuliia Bibik (a rendering of a photograph of a triploid frog taken by Mariia Shulyka). The first version of “Batrachos” was created by Vitalii Komlev. At present, site operation and development are maintained by Roman Usov. The site authors express their sincere gratitude to them. The authors will be sincerely grateful to all visitors for pointing out errors, constructive criticism, interesting questions, and help in further developing the site.