The advertisement calls of Brazilian anurans: Historical review, current knowledge and future directions

Abstract

Advertisement calls are often used as essential basic information in studies of animal behaviour, ecology, evolution, conservation, taxonomy or biodiversity inventories. Yet the description of this type of acoustic signals is far to be completed, especially in tropical regions, and is frequently non-standardized or limited in information, restricting the application of bioacoustics in science. Here we conducted a scientometric review of the described adverstisement calls of anuran species of Brazil, the world richest territory in anurans, to evaluate the amount, standard and trends of the knowledge on this key life-history trait and to identify gaps and directions for future research strategies. Based on our review, 607 studies have been published between 1960 to 2016 describing the calls of 719 Brazilian anuran species (68.8% of all species), a publication rate of 10.6 descriptions per year. From each of these studies, thirty-one variables were recorded and examined with descriptive and inferential statistics. In spite of an exponential rise over the last six decades in the number of studies, described calls, and quantity of published metadata, as revealed by regression models, clear shortfalls were identified with regard to anuran families, biomes, and categories of threat. More than 55% of these species belong to the two richest families, Hylidae or Leptodactylidae. The lowest percentage of species with described calls corresponds to the most diverse biomes, namely Atlantic Forest (65.1%) and Amazon (71.5%), and to the IUCN categories of threat (56.8%), relative to the less-than-threatened categories (74.3%). Moreover, only 52.3% of the species have some of its calls deposited in the main scientific sound collections. Our findings evidence remarkable knowledge gaps on advertisement calls of Brazilian anuran species, emphasizing the need of further efforts in standardizing and increasing the description of anuran calls for their application in studies of the behaviour, ecology, biogeography or taxonomy of the species.

Herpetofauna of Parque Estadual Altamiro de Moura Pacheco: one of the last remnants of seasonal forest in the core region of the Brazilian Cerrado

“…Among these, P. atim and R. sebbeni were recently described (Brasileiro & Haddad, 2015;Vaz-Silva et al, 2015), and thus information about their natural history and geographic distribution are lacking, making the assessment of their true conservation status difficult (Morais et al, 2018). Research efforts should be directed towards filling the knowledge gaps for these species, including information about their ecology, natural history and distribution (Guerra et al, 2018). Non-evaluated species represent taxonomic uncertainty (Scinax aff.…”

Notes on vocalizations of Brazilian amphibians IV: advertisement calls of 20 Atlantic Forest frog species

“…The auditory detection, using automated recordings, supports both increase the knowledge of a poorly known species, as help us to monitor the impacts of human activities on biodiversity (Llusia et al, 2013; Schmeller et al, 2017). With the current fast advance of acoustic knowledge (Guerra et al, 2018), such techniques can also to be applied in favor of amphibian conservation.…”

Calls of Boana latistriata (Caramaschi & Cruz, 2004) (Amphibia, Anura, Hylidae), an endemic tree frog from the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil

“…Amongst the different anuran call types, advertisement calls have the highest value in taxonomy (Köhler et al 2017). Despite being the most studied call type, there is a need for further documentation (Toledo et al 2014, Guerra et al 2018a) and understanding of the importance of advertisement call variation both within- and between-individuals (Gerhardt 1991, Köhler et al 2017).…”