Exploring the acoustic diversity of Andean frogs in the Farallones de Cali National Natural Park, southwestern Colombia

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe advertisement calls that frogs emit in a reproductive context are among the most conspicuous and studied acoustic signals. They play a significant role in interspecific recognition, mate selection, and territoriality and can be used in different fields such as taxonomy, ethology, ecology, and evolutionary studies. In Colombia, around 40% of the recognized frog species have descriptions of their calls in the literature. However, the Cordillera Occidental in the tropical Andes and the Strabomantidae family are underrepresented in the literature despite the huge species diversity they hold. Here, we described the advertisement calls of eleven frog species belonging to three families from three localities at high elevations in the Cordillera Occidental, which have been inaccessible to scientific research due to security concerns. We describe the advertisement calls of five Pristimantis species for the first time and estimated the daily acoustic activity patterns of four Pristimantis species. Our findings enhance the number of known advertisement calls for anuran species from one of the least-represented regions and families in the country. In addition, they provide important information regarding the natural history of four Pristimantis species that could be used as a baseline for future long-term population studies.KEYWORDS: Acoustic detectionadvertisement callsCordillera Occidentalreproductionvocal repertoire AcknowledgmentsWe gratefully acknowledge the invaluable assistance during the fieldwork of J.D. Valencia Velasco, J. Buitrago, J.P. Lopez and the staff of Farallones de Cali NNP–especially G.A. Rodríguez Salazar. Special thanks to E. Barona Cortes for loaning us essential equipment for fieldwork and providing valuable advice about data analysis, and to J. Mendez-Narvaez for the valuable comments on the first version of the manuscript. For loan specimens and assistance with work in the museum, we are grateful to J.D. Lynch, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Instituto de Ciencias Naturales (ICN), and JJ Ospina Sarria for providing high resolution images of P. buckleyi housed in KU. We are also grateful to Dr. Mirco Solé, editor-in-chief of Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions that improved our manuscript. Finally, we dedicated this work to the memory of Gustavo Kattan, who believed in and led the project ‘Una isla en las nubes: establecimiento de línea base para monitoreo de un páramo aislado frente a cambio climático.’This research was conducted under the authorization of the National Authority of Environmental Licences and the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia (Resolución 1070 del 28 de agosto de 2015), and the National Natural Parks of Colombia (Resolución 0351 del 05 de octubre de 2012).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01650521.2023.2266187Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Amphibian monitoring program of the Farallones de Cali NNP, Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation of Colombia [Contract No. 837-2020], and Impretics E.I.C.E. [Agreement No. 0046].