Climate often regulates different aspects of the life cycle and activity of amphibians. Climatic seasonality may impose severe restrictions on breeding patterns of directdeveloping terraranan frogs. We studied the influence of abiotic cues on calling activity of males of the 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 used ordinal logistic regression to evaluate the relationship between independent climatic variables and the intensity of calling activity. The calling season of males of O. 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 the emission and the 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 with full chorus activity that could be associated with a mechanism of inter-male spacing.
Natural habitats have drastically regressed due to rapid changes in land-use during recent decades, generating a decrease in species diversity. In light of natural habitat destruction worldwide, there is a need to adopt an integrative approach to the study of biodiversity in order to better assess the magnitude of diversity loss in landscapes affected by human intervention. The aim of this study was to assess and compare anuran assemblages under different land-uses in a subtropical forest of NW Argentina using an integrative view of diversity through different measures. We assessed alpha and beta diversity components for three complementary diversity measures: species richness, functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity in three land-uses: forest, tobacco and suburban. We carried out generalized linear mixed models with an autocorrelation structure to compare the three diversity measures across the different land-uses. We also used a beta diversity partitioning method to determine nestedness and turnover processes in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dissimilarity. Our results suggest a filtering effect of the land-uses on the diversity of anuran assemblages in the surveyed area, with an increased loss of anuran diversity in areas with intensified land-use, such as tobacco monoculture. This study contributes to understand amphibian communities associated to modified habitats in the Southern Andean Yungas forests from Argentina. Our findings highlight the importance of disentangling each diversity component separately to detect more accurately the diversity patterns associated to land-use change.
Elachistocleis haroi sp. nov. is described from El Algarrobal, Jujuy province, northwestern Argentina. The new species is diagnosed by the dorsal pattern of mid-longitudinal bright yellow stripe from the intraocular zone, surpassing the postcephalic transverse skin fold, to vent; dorsum grayish brown mottled with a paravertebral symmetric pattern of dark spots resembling a pine tree; and a thin regular yellow line on the posterior surface of the thighs and tibiae. The advertisement call is a long trill with an average duration of 3.18 seconds, multipulsed with a mean dominant frequency of 4.56 kHz. The tadpole is characterized by the oral dermal flaps with papillae-like edges.
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