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Sexual dichromatism in a cryptic poison frog is correlated with female tadpole transport

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Abstract

Sexual dichromatism has provided important information for understanding sexual selection, but its link to reproductive success has received little attention. Poison frogs and their relatives within the superfamily Dendrobatoidea present striking color variation. Despite this variability, evidence of sexual dichromatism in the over 330 species described is limited to the gular region of some cryptically colored species. Colostethus imbricolus is a cryptically colored dendrobatid with distinct orange and yellow spots at the axillar, inguinal and femoral regions. Here we show that these spots stand clearly out from the environment during behavioral displays and that they present marked sexual differences in their conspicuousness, with females having more conspicuous spots. Unlike most species of Dendrobatoidea that provide parental care in the form of male tadpole transport, we found that in C. imbricolus, females performed this behavior. By correlating color measurements and behavioral observations, we show that females with a higher number of transported tadpoles are also the most conspicuous. Our findings show a significant association between sexual dichromatism of the spots and female parental care while opening exciting perspectives for the occurrence of both traits. In addition, our results provide significant insights to address the function of dual-color patterns (i.e., cryptic from distance—aposematic from nearby) in amphibians.

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Acknowledgements

We kindly thank María del Carmen Vargas, Daniel Mejía Vargas, Jack Paul Restrepo, and the Victoria community, especially to Asprilla brothers and Anselma Ramirez, for their accompaniment in the field during the research. For constructive comments in the draft of this manuscript, we thank Julián Faivovich and Oscar Ramos, and especially Evan Twomey and Taran Grant. The Colombian Ministry of Science funded the project through a grant awarded to P.P.-R. (National Ph.D. Scholarship Fund 785 of 2017), and the seed project granted to P.P.-R. from the Science Department from the University of Los Andes (2019 Seed Project Fund). A.E.B. is a researcher of CONICET.

Funding

The Colombian Ministry of Science funded the project through a grant awarded to P.P.-R. (National Ph.D. Scholarship Fund 785 of 2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, AA 4976, Colombia

    Pablo Palacios-Rodríguez & Marco González-Santoro

  2. Laboratory of Biodiversity and Cloud Forests Conservancy, Bioconservancy, Jardín, Colombia

    Adolfo Amézquita

  3. Laboratorio de Genética Evolutiva, Instituto de Biología Subtropical (CONICET UNaM), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Químicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Misiones, 3300, Posadas, Argentina

    Andrés E. Brunetti

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  1. Pablo Palacios-Rodríguez
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  2. Marco González-Santoro
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  3. Adolfo Amézquita
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  4. Andrés E. Brunetti
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Contributions

P.P.-R. and M.G.-S. designed the research and conducted the fieldwork. P.P.-R., A.M., and A.E.B. analyzed the data. P.P.R. and A.E.B. wrote the paper. All authors reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Pablo Palacios-Rodríguez or Andrés E. Brunetti.

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The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of Comité Institucional para el Cuidado y Uso de Animales de Laboratorio (CICUAL) at Universidad de Los Andes. Procedures for capture, handling, and samples collections of live animals in the field were approved by Autoridad Nacional de licencias Ambientales (ANLA) (Permiso Marco de investigación No. 1177-Oct 9th, 2014).

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Palacios-Rodríguez, P., González-Santoro, M., Amézquita, A. et al. Sexual dichromatism in a cryptic poison frog is correlated with female tadpole transport. Evol Ecol 36, 153–162 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-021-10147-4

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