Patterns of daily and seasonal calling activity of a direct developing frog of the subtropical Andean forests of Argentina

AKMENTIS, M.; PEREYRA, L.; SANABRIA E.; VAIRA, M.

BIOACUSTICS

A B ACADEMIC PUBL

Año: 2014

0952-4622

Climate often regulate different aspects of the life cycle and activity of amphibians. 19 Climatic seasonality may impose severe restrictions on breeding patterns of direct 20 developing terraranan frogs. We studied the influence of abiotic cues on calling activity 21 of males of direct developing frog, Oreobates discoidalis in the Yungas forests of north- 22 western Argentina. Vocalization activity and daily emission pattern of the vocal 23 repertoire were registered with a frog-logger, and climatic variables were registered 24 with a data logger. We sampled two reproductive seasons from 2010 to 2011. We 25 employed ordinal logistic regression (OLR) to evaluate the relationship between 26 independent climatic variables and the intensity of calling activity. The calling season of 27 males of Oreobates discoidalis was triggered by the first rainfall of the aestival season. 28 The species could be defined as crepuscular-nocturnal with a calling activity peak at 29 dusk. Sporadic calling activity during day time was associated with conditions of high 30 humidity and rainfall. Both, emission and intensity of the advertisement call activity 31 were influenced by time of the day, high levels of relative air humidity, and presence of 32 rainfall; air temperature was not a determinant factor in the calling activity of this frog 33 species. Territorial calls were strongly associated to full chorus activity that could be 34 associated to a mechanism of inter-male spacing