An overview of parental care in the foam-nesting frogs of the genus Leptodactylus (Anura: Leptodactylidae): current knowledge and future directions

Abstract

Amphibians exhibit diverse parental care behaviours, which may be performed by the female, male or both parents. In the Neotropical family Leptodactylidae, frogs in the genus Leptodactylus exhibit different parenting behaviours. The repertoire of care behaviours includes egg/nest attendance, nest chamber sealing, tadpole feeding with trophic eggs, and tadpole attendance associated with complex behaviours, such as pumping behaviour and channel digging. Based on the available information, we found that 23.8% of Leptodactylus species are known to exhibit post-fertilization parental care. Future studies should focus on mechanisms involved in parent-offspring communication, including acoustic and chemical signals. Moreover, behaviours such as provisioning with trophic eggs are not well understood and deserves further investigation. Because of these complex parental care behaviours, tadpole schooling, and relative easy observation, frogs in the genus Leptodactylus represent excellent models for studies interested in parent-offspring communication and evolution of parental care.

Mother-offspring chemical communication and tadpole aggregation in a neotropical foam-nesting frog

“…Furthermore, our results indicate that school attraction does not seem to be mother-speci c, therefore, tadpoles can follow unrelated attending females probably bene ting from alloparental care. Nonetheless, because females of many species of Leptodactylus perform "pumping" behaviour (sensu Wells & Bard, 1988), and diverse communication mode are known (Carrillo et al, 2023), further experiments are needed to investigate different signals that might be involved in the communication between attending females and offspring in the genus.…”

“…Leptodactylus, the main function of parental care is to protect tadpoles against predators and to keep them far away from deep waters, where predators are more abundant and food sources are limited(Vaz- Ferreira, 1975;Martins, 2001;Hurme, 2015;Carrillo et al, 2023). Tadpoles and females travel long distances (seeWells & Bar, 1988), and schools can follow attending females even through excavated channels and tunnels(Rodrigues et al, 2011;Hoffmann, 2006).…”