Nunes-de-Almeida Carlos H L, Assis Clodoaldo L, Feio Renato N, Toledo Luís Felipe
Laboratório de História Natural de Anfíbios Brasileiros (LaHNAB), Departamento de Biologia Animal, Instituto de Biologia, Unicamp, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.
Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Departamento de Biologia Animal, Museu de Zoologia João Moojen, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
PLoS One. 2016 Sep 12;11(9):e0162617. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162617. eCollection 2016.
Frogs of the genus Thoropa comprise six endemic Brazilian species on the Eastern side of the country. Little is known about their natural history, especially about their acoustic communication. Therefore, aiming to provide an overview of their vocalizations, we analyzed and redescribed male advertisement calls of three living and two possibly extinct species. The smaller species, T. petropolitana and T. lutzi, produce simple calls (one single note) with a higher frequency range than the remaining larger ones. On the other hand, the larger species present complex calls, with more than one note: T. megatympanum calls have three notes, T. taophora calls have four notes, and T. miliaris calls varies from three to six notes. Population snout-vent length negatively correlated with peak of dominant frequency as expected. However, highlighted differences between two populations of T. lutzi, which could indicate need of further taxonomic evaluation of those lineages. Peculiar morphology, such as the absence of vocal sacs and slits, may have contributed to their call variation and highly banded frequency structure. If the observed population differences reflect species-level differences, T. lutzi may be classified as a critically endangered species, as T. petropolitana. Furthermore, we provided a suggestion to an unusual behavior in frogs: calling with the mouth open in the smaller species of the genus.
托罗帕属的青蛙包括该国东部的六种巴西特有物种。人们对它们的自然历史知之甚少，尤其是关于它们的声学通讯。因此，为了概述它们的发声情况，我们分析并重新描述了三种现存和两种可能已灭绝物种的雄性求偶叫声。体型较小的物种，如彼得罗波利斯托罗帕蛙和卢茨托罗帕蛙，发出的叫声简单（单音），频率范围比其余体型较大的物种更高。另一方面，体型较大的物种发出的叫声复杂，有不止一个音符：巨型鼓膜托罗帕蛙的叫声有三个音符，陶福拉托罗帕蛙的叫声有四个音符，米利亚里斯托罗帕蛙的叫声从三个到六个音符不等。正如预期的那样，种群的吻肛长度与优势频率峰值呈负相关。然而，卢茨托罗帕蛙的两个种群之间存在显著差异，这可能表明需要对这些谱系进行进一步的分类评估。独特的形态，如没有声囊和缝隙，可能导致了它们叫声的变化和高度带状的频率结构。如果观察到的种群差异反映了物种水平的差异，那么卢茨托罗帕蛙可能会像彼得罗波利斯托罗帕蛙一样被列为极度濒危物种。此外，我们对青蛙的一种不寻常行为提出了一个建议：该属体型较小的物种会张着嘴鸣叫。
