From habitat use to social behavior: natural history of a voiceless poison frog, Dendrobates tinctorius

Abstract

Descriptive studies of natural history have always been a source of knowledge on which experimental work and scientific progress rely. Poison frogs are a well-studied group of small Neotropical frogs with diverse parental behaviors, distinct calls, and bright colors that warn predators about their toxicity; and a showcase of advances in fundamental biology through natural history observations. The dyeing poison frog, Dendrobates tinctorius, is emblematic of the Guianas region, widespread in the pet trade, and increasingly popular in research. This species shows several unusual behaviors, such as the lack of advertisement calls and the aggregation around tree-fall gaps, which remain poorly described and understood. Here, we summarize our observations from a natural population of D. tinctorius in French Guiana collected over various field trips between 2009 and 2017; our aim is to provide groundwork for future fundamental and applied research spanning parental care, animal dispersal, disease spread, habitat use in relation to color patterns, and intra-specific communication, to name a few. We report sex differences in habitat use and the striking invasion of tree-fall gaps; describe their courtship and aggressive behaviors; document egg development and tadpole transport; and discuss how the knowledge generated by this study could set the grounds for further research on the behavior, ecology, and conservation of this species.

Much more than a clasp: evolutionary patterns of amplexus diversity in anurans

“…Our results support such intuition, as at least 22 dendrobatid species exhibit cephalic amplexus, whereas 18 species exhibit no amplexus (Weygoldt, 1987;Castillo-Trenn & Coloma, 2008). Moreover, most species of Dendrobatidae are prolonged breeders (Wells, 1977), mostly terrestrial, highly territorial and whose oviposition occurs in hidden places under leaflitter and tree roots (Wells, 1978;Pröhl, 2005;Summers & Tumulty, 2014;Rojas & Pašukonis, 2019). Under these conditions, it might be assumed that aposematic males have fewer risks of predation and losing a female, attracted via acoustic and visual signals, because of the action of an intruder male (Zamudio et al, 2016).…”

Developments in Amphibian Parental Care Research: History, Present Advances, and Future Perspectives

“…According to the IUCN (2018), 37% of amphibian species are threatened and over 22% are so poorly documented that we cannot assess their threat status. So-called ''basic'' descriptive work is valuable and irreplaceable, providing foundational information needed to refine hypotheses about the function and evolution of behaviors and ecology, and thus must continue (e.g., Ferreira et al 2019;Rojas and Pašukonis 2019;Ospina-L et al 2019). For example, natural history observations were essential for a recent character state reconstruction illustrating the evolution of parental investment in caecilians (Kupfer et al 2016), and similar observations are needed to approach such questions in frog and salamander groups.…”

Size-dependent tradeoffs in aggressive behavior towards kin

“…Males carrying more than one tadpole at once can be seen either depositing both tadpoles in the same pool or distributing tadpoles between pools (Rojas and Pašukonis, 2019). Tadpoles of this species are omnivorous and frequently demonstrate cannibalistic behaviour (Rojas, 2014(Rojas, , 2015; despite this, it is not unusual to see tadpoles of various stages coexisting within the same pool in the wild (Rojas and Pašukonis, 2019). We used tadpoles from a breeding laboratory population of D. tinctorius kept at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.…”

“…Dendrobates tinctorius is a species of Neotropical poison frog whose larvae are aggressive cannibals (Rojas, 2014). Tadpoles are often deposited by their fathers in ephemeral pools of water, where they are left to develop until metamorphosis (Rojas and Pašukonis, 2019). Although tadpoles are most often transported singly, the ephemeral pools in which they are deposited can have multiple tadpoles of various developmental stages (Rojas and Pašukonis, 2019) and degrees of relatedness (B.…”