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Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure

BACKGROUND: Anurans largely rely on acoustic communication for sexual selection and reproduction. While multiple studies have focused on the calling activity patterns of prolonged breeding assemblages, species that concentrate their reproduction in short-time windows, explosive breeders, are still l...

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Autores principales: Ulloa, Juan Sebastian, Aubin, Thierry, Llusia, Diego, Courtois, Élodie A., Fouquet, Antoine, Gaucher, Philippe, Pavoine, Sandrine, Sueur, Jérôme
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6639928/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31324238
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-019-0243-y
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author Ulloa, Juan Sebastian
Aubin, Thierry
Llusia, Diego
Courtois, Élodie A.
Fouquet, Antoine
Gaucher, Philippe
Pavoine, Sandrine
Sueur, Jérôme
author_facet Ulloa, Juan Sebastian
Aubin, Thierry
Llusia, Diego
Courtois, Élodie A.
Fouquet, Antoine
Gaucher, Philippe
Pavoine, Sandrine
Sueur, Jérôme
author_sort Ulloa, Juan Sebastian
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Anurans largely rely on acoustic communication for sexual selection and reproduction. While multiple studies have focused on the calling activity patterns of prolonged breeding assemblages, species that concentrate their reproduction in short-time windows, explosive breeders, are still largely unknown, probably because of their ephemeral nature. In tropical regions, multiple species of explosive breeders may simultaneously aggregate leading to massive, mixed and dynamic choruses. To understand the environmental triggers, the phenology and composition of these choruses, we collected acoustic and environmental data at five ponds in French Guiana during a rainy season, assessing acoustic communities before and during explosive breeding events. RESULTS: We detected in each pond two explosive breeding events, lasting between 24 and 70 h. The rainfall during the previous 48 h was the most important factor predicting the emergence of these events. During explosive breeding events, we identified a temporal factor that clearly distinguished pre- and mid-explosive communities. A common pool of explosive breeders co-occurred in most of the events, namely Chiasmocleis shudikarensis, Trachycephalus coriaceus and Ceratophrys cornuta. Nevertheless, the species composition was remarkably variable between ponds and for each pond between the first and the second events. The acoustic structure of explosive breeding communities had outlying levels of amplitude and unexpected low acoustic diversity, significantly lower than the communities preceding explosive breeding events. CONCLUSIONS: Explosive breeding communities were tightly linked with specific rainfall patterns. With climate change increasing rainfall variability in tropical regions, such communities may experience significant shifts in their timing, distribution and composition. In structurally similar habitats, located in the same region without obvious barriers, our results highlight the variation in composition across explosive breeding events. The characteristic acoustic structure of explosive breeding events stands out from the circadian acoustic environment being easily detected at long distance, probably reflecting behavioural singularities and conveying heterospecific information announcing the availability of short-lived breeding sites. Our data provides a baseline against which future changes, possibly linked to climate change, can be measured, contributing to a better understanding on the causes, patterns and consequences of these unique assemblages.
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spelling pubmed-66399282019-07-29 Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure Ulloa, Juan Sebastian Aubin, Thierry Llusia, Diego Courtois, Élodie A. Fouquet, Antoine Gaucher, Philippe Pavoine, Sandrine Sueur, Jérôme BMC Ecol Research Article BACKGROUND: Anurans largely rely on acoustic communication for sexual selection and reproduction. While multiple studies have focused on the calling activity patterns of prolonged breeding assemblages, species that concentrate their reproduction in short-time windows, explosive breeders, are still largely unknown, probably because of their ephemeral nature. In tropical regions, multiple species of explosive breeders may simultaneously aggregate leading to massive, mixed and dynamic choruses. To understand the environmental triggers, the phenology and composition of these choruses, we collected acoustic and environmental data at five ponds in French Guiana during a rainy season, assessing acoustic communities before and during explosive breeding events. RESULTS: We detected in each pond two explosive breeding events, lasting between 24 and 70 h. The rainfall during the previous 48 h was the most important factor predicting the emergence of these events. During explosive breeding events, we identified a temporal factor that clearly distinguished pre- and mid-explosive communities. A common pool of explosive breeders co-occurred in most of the events, namely Chiasmocleis shudikarensis, Trachycephalus coriaceus and Ceratophrys cornuta. Nevertheless, the species composition was remarkably variable between ponds and for each pond between the first and the second events. The acoustic structure of explosive breeding communities had outlying levels of amplitude and unexpected low acoustic diversity, significantly lower than the communities preceding explosive breeding events. CONCLUSIONS: Explosive breeding communities were tightly linked with specific rainfall patterns. With climate change increasing rainfall variability in tropical regions, such communities may experience significant shifts in their timing, distribution and composition. In structurally similar habitats, located in the same region without obvious barriers, our results highlight the variation in composition across explosive breeding events. The characteristic acoustic structure of explosive breeding events stands out from the circadian acoustic environment being easily detected at long distance, probably reflecting behavioural singularities and conveying heterospecific information announcing the availability of short-lived breeding sites. Our data provides a baseline against which future changes, possibly linked to climate change, can be measured, contributing to a better understanding on the causes, patterns and consequences of these unique assemblages. BioMed Central 2019-07-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6639928/ /pubmed/31324238 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-019-0243-y Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ulloa, Juan Sebastian
Aubin, Thierry
Llusia, Diego
Courtois, Élodie A.
Fouquet, Antoine
Gaucher, Philippe
Pavoine, Sandrine
Sueur, Jérôme
Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure
title Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure
title_full Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure
title_fullStr Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure
title_full_unstemmed Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure
title_short Explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure
title_sort explosive breeding in tropical anurans: environmental triggers, community composition and acoustic structure
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6639928/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31324238
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-019-0243-y
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