Courtship and mating behaviour of the brilliant-thighed frogAllobates femoralisfrom Central Amazonia: implications for the study of a species complex

The peculiar breeding biology of the Amazonian frog Allobates subfolionidificans (Aromobatidae)

“…The courtship, mating and oviposition behaviors of A. subfolionidificans are complex and involve vocal and tactile interactions, which may interact characterizing multimodal communication between and within sexes as reported for the congeneric species Allobates femoralis (Narins et al 2005, Luna et al 2010, Montanarin et al 2011. The behavior of leaf exploration by males before oviposition was reported for the dendrobatoid Anomaloglossus stepheni (Martins 1989) by Juncá (1998), which proposed that males seek to optimize the courtship process to avoid female desertion.…”

“…Formerly considered a dendrobatoid synapomorphy (Duellman and Trueb 1994), it is currently proposed that cephalic amplexus arose independently at least three times within the superfamily (Grant et al 2006), although data on this topic are still inconsistent and/or not available for many species (Montanarin et al 2011). Apparently, the tactile interaction where male A. subfolionidificans touches the dorsolateral region of the female body fulfils the function of stimulating oviposition, as observed in Anomaloglossus stepheni (Juncá and Rodrigues 2006).…”

“…Males emitted advertisement calls from leaves, twigs, trunks and roots on the forest litter. Pairs initiated a courtship march (sensu Montanarin et al 2011) when females approached a calling male at a distance of 30-40 cm. Males were occasionally seen exploring leaves posteriorly used for oviposition, indicating that they evaluate structural features before conducting females to nesting sites.…”

“…In addition, in species such as Allobates masniger (Morales 2002) and Allobates nidicola (Caldwell and Lima 2003) eggs hatch into endotrophic tadpoles that complete development in a terrestrial nest. Reproductive modes found in Allobates comprise many behavioral particularities that include 1) the use of a large repertory of visual, acoustic and tactile signals during long interactions for courtship and mating such as in A. caeruleodactylus (Lima et al 2002) and A. femoralis (Boulenger 1884) (Montanarin et al 2011), 2) the use of different oviposition sites such as foam nests constructed by leptodactylids in A. sumtuosus Morales 2002 (Kok and Ernst 2007), fallen leaves on the forest floor by A. marchesianus (Melin 1941) (Lima and Keller 2003) and bromeliads by A. bromelicola (Test 1956), as well as 3) intersexual flexibility in parental care as observed in Allobates femoralis (e.g., Ringler et al 2013Ringler et al , 2015. Many aspects of these behaviors are completely unknown for most species of dendrobatoid (Dendrobatidae + Aromobatidae) frogs, especially due to the high rate of species descriptions within the genus.…”

On the distinctive call of a threatened phenotype of Allobates femoralis (Anura: Aromobatidae) and its recognition by allopatric conspecific males

“…However, courtship behavior is long and complex in A. femoralis, and involves a large array of acoustic, visual and tactile cues (Roithmair, 1994;Montanarin et al, 2011). So far, female A. femoralis were irresponsive to playback trials conducted in the field, laboratory, or semi-captive conditions (L. K. Erdtmann and the authors, unpublished data) and the best approximation to test intraspecific recognition in territorial anuran species while overcoming issues relating to female availability and motivation is to make use of male-male recognition experiments, as males frequently exhibit conspicuous and measurable behavioral responses.…”