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

AKMENTINS, MAURICIO S.; PEREYRA, LAURA C.; SANABRIA, EDUARDO; VAIRA, MARCOS

BIOACUSTICS

A B ACADEMIC PUBL

Año: 2015 vol. 24 p. 88 - 99

0952-4622

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