Biologia reprodutiva, tamanho e dieta de Hypsiboas cinerascens (Anura: Hylidae) em dois fragmentos florestais urbanos na Amazônia Central, Brasil

Chemical signaling in animals often plays a central role in eliciting a variety of responses during reproductive interactions between males and females. One of the best-known vertebrate courtship pheromone systems is sodefrin precursor-like factors (SPFs), a family of two-domain three-finger proteins with a female-receptivity enhancing function, currently only known from salamanders. The oldest divergence between active components in a single salamander species dates back to the Late Paleozoic, indicating that these proteins potentially gained a pheromone function earlier in amphibian evolution. Here, we combined whole transcriptome sequencing, proteomics, histology, and molecular phylogenetics in a comparative approach to investigate SPF occurrence in male breeding glands across the evolutionary tree of anurans (frogs and toads). Our study shows that multiple families of both terrestrially and aquatically reproducing frogs have substantially increased expression levels of SPFs in male breeding glands. This suggests that multiple anuran lineages make use of SPFs to complement acoustic and visual sexual signaling during courtship. Comparative analyses show that anurans independently recruited these proteins each time the gland location on the male’s body allowed efficient transmission of the secretion to the female’s nares.

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Diversity and evolution of sexually dimorphic mental and lateral glands in Cophomantini treefrogs (Anura: Hylidae: Hylinae)

Brunetti

Hermida

Luna

et al. 2014

Biol J Linn Soc Lond

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We describe the structure and histochemistry of mental and lateral glands in a representative array of 28 species of five genera of the Neotropical hylid frog tribe Cophomantini. Structural diversity was coded in 15 characters that were optimized on the most recent phylogenetic hypothesis. Mental and lateral glands occur in 17 species and 10 species, respectively, whereas nine species have both. Each glandular concentration may have two types of sexually dimorphic skin glands (SDSGs), specialized mucous and specialized serous glands, which occur independently or may co‐occur. Distinctive characteristics related to these glands are shape, aspect of the secretion, disposition, and distribution. The occurrences of mental and lateral glands, and the characters derived from macroscopic and microscopic examinations, have an intricate taxonomic distribution, with differing levels of homoplasy. The function of SDSGs in Cophomantini is currently unknown. However, based on structural and histochemical similarities to SDSGs from other species of amphibians where experimental evidence exists, we infer they might be involved in the secretion of chemical signals during courtship behaviour. The distribution pattern of these glands, along with the existence of different signals (i.e. acoustic, visual, tactile), suggests the presence of multimodal signalling for some species of the tribe. © 2014 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2014, 114, 12–34.

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Biologia reprodutiva, tamanho e dieta de Hypsiboas cinerascens (Anura: Hylidae) em dois fragmentos florestais urbanos na Amazônia Central, Brasil

Cited by 6 publications

References 21 publications

Trophic ecology of two Pithecopus species (Anura: Phyllomedusidae) living in syntopy in southern Bahia, Brazil

Trophic ecology of two Pithecopus species (Anura: Phyllomedusidae) living in syntopy in southern Bahia, Brazil

Multiple Independent Recruitment of Sodefrin Precursor-Like Factors in Anuran Sexually Dimorphic Glands

Diversity and evolution of sexually dimorphic mental and lateral glands in Cophomantini treefrogs (Anura: Hylidae: Hylinae)

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