Abstract
The use of acoustic signals is a common characteristic of most anuran species to mediate intraspecific communication. Besides many social purposes, one of the main functions of these signals is species recognition. For this reason, this phenotypic trait is normally applied to taxonomy or to construct evolutionary relationship hypotheses. Here the acoustic repertoire of five populations of the genus Allobates from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest are presented for the first time, on a vulnerable to extinction Neotropical taxon. The description of males’ advertisement and aggressive calls and a female call emitted in a courtship context are presented. In addition, the advertisement calls of individuals from distinct geographical regions were compared. Differences in frequency range and note duration may imply in taxonomic rearrangements of these populations, once considered distinct species, and more recently, proposed as a single species, Allobates olfersioides. Calls of the male from the state of Rio de Janeiro do not overlap spectrally with calls of males from northern populations, while the shorter notes emitted by males from Alagoas also distinguishes this population from the remaining southern populations. Therefore, it is likely that at least two of the junior synonyms should be revalidated. Similarities among male advertisement and female calls are generally reported in other anuran species; these calls may have evolved from a preexisting vocalization common to both sexes. Male aggressive calls were different from both the male advertisement and female calls, since it was composed by a longer and multi-pulsed note. Aggressive and advertisement calls generally have similar dominant frequencies, but they have temporal distinctions. Such patterns were corroborated with the Atlantic Forest Rocket Frogs. These findings may support future research addressing the taxonomy of the group, behavioral evolution, and amphibian conservation.
Highlights
Acoustic communication is the most used channel of intraspecific information transference in anurans (Walkowiak 2007; Wells 2007)
While the morphological data showed that these populations are cryptic, the observed variation on frequency band and note duration of the advertisement call represents a strong evidence that these populations are at least, three distinct species
This finding is in agreement with the suggested in Bokermann (1967), who indicated possible acoustics differences in regards to temporal properties between A. olfersioides and A. capixaba
Summary
Acoustic communication is the most used channel of intraspecific information transference in anurans (Walkowiak 2007; Wells 2007). Diverse social functions are mediated by such acoustic signals, for example during territorial conflicts and mate attraction (Wells 2007; Toledo et al 2015). The mating system in anurans is the most likely explanation for this fact, since females usually represent the selective sex and have to discriminate among potential mates using acoustic evidence from male calls (Wells 1977). Considering the intraspecific social functions, these acoustic signals potentially carry important evidence of species recognition, and the appropriate calls description is useful for taxonomic decisions and future evolutionary studies (Robillard et al 2006; Padial et al 2008; Köhler et al 2017)
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