GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN THE ADVERTISEMENT

BARAQUET, MARIANA; GRENAT, PABLO R.; SALAS, NANCY E.; MARTINO, ADOLFO L.

BIOCELL

INST HISTOL EMBRIOL-CONICET

Lugar: San Juan; Año: 2011 vol. 35 p. 234 - 234

0327-9545

Geographic variation in the advertisement call of frogs and toads is commonly observed among conspecific populations of widespread anuran species. Some authors suggested that these signals, because of the speciesspecific information they convey, should show little variation within species. Most of these studies analyzed the geographic variation of mate choice signals in order to understand the role of geographic isolation or sexual selection, in the earliest stages of population divergence that might result in speciation. This paper analyzed the geographic variation of advertisement call of Hypsiboas cordobae in six populations, covering the area of distribution of that species. Each call was characterized by seven temporal variables and four spectral variables. Nine variables showed significant differences (p < 0.05) between populations when compared via ANOVA.The acoustic variables that correlate with temperature were adjusted to 14° C. Discriminant analyses showed differences between the six populations in study (p = 0,0003). Then, we applied a simple regression analysis between each of the variables and latitude of each population, six of the spectral variables showed a significant positive relationship. From discriminant analysis, we calculated Mahalanobis acoustics distances averaging among the six populations, and the Mantel test was applied to estimate the correlation between geographic distance (in kilometers) and the acoustic distances (Mahalanobis), which no showed significant correlation with geographic distance (p = 0.0635, r = -0.498, t = -1.5262). This paper showed a clinal variation from south to north decrease in the dominant frequency of the call. Several authors attribute this change to the negative correlation between SVL and dominant frequency, so this work should be complemented by morphometric studies.