Clutch attendance and call parameters are linked to mating success in a glassfrog with paternal care.

Abstract

Females of some species improve their reproductive success not only by being choosy and selecting males with certain traits, but also by sequentially mating with multiple males within one reproductive season. However, it is relatively unknown whether females also evaluate parental care during mate choice and, if they do, whether males actively communicate their care status to approaching females. We monitored a natural population of the glassfrog Hyalinobatrachium valerioi, a species with sequential polyandry and paternal care, to assess the role of parental care and advertisement calling on male mating success. Using field observations and acoustic analysis, we found that even in this species which has single-note calls, variations in call parameters allow for individual discrimination. Calling was strongly associated with mating success in H. valerioi males. Males with longer calls achieved the highest total mating success over the entire study period, indicating that females might have a preference for longer calls. Moreover, active calling and the presence of clutches were both linked to male mating success on a given night, although we cannot fully exclude that the link between presence of clutches and mating success is due to attractive call features alone. Call parameters differed between males when they were calling on top of their clutches, compared to sitting on the leaf directly, which might provide reliable cues about parental state to approaching females. These findings demonstrate the prominent role of acoustic communication and female choice in a species with male parental care and sequential polyandry.