Ameerega pulchripecta

Data on ecology and behavior of A. pulchripecta in their natural habitat are scarce; the species was hard to find, and it has been heard only during less than an hour around dawn and again around twilight (personal observations by the authors). Also, its distribution appears restricted to Serra do Navio, in the state of Amapá, northeastern Brazilian Amazon. In the course of a field expedition to this area, we recorded calling males of A. pulchripecta. We report here the results of our bioacoustic analyses on those recordings, as a contribution to the study of this species group. Males were found in a forested habitat (00 ° 54 ’ 3 ” N, 52 ° 00 ’ 48.5 ” W), about 400 m east of the Amapari River and 2.5 km NW of the village of Pedra Preta, Municipality of Serra do Navio, in the state of Amapá, Brazil. They were calling from ground crevices and amidst roots, always perched less than 40 cm above the forest floor. We recorded at least one minute of consecutive and spontaneous advertisement calls from each of six individuals. A Sennheiser ME 67 microphone connected to a Marantz PMD 670 digital (44 kHz and 16 bits) recorder was placed in front and at least 50 cm away from each calling male. Immediately after capturing each male, we measured air temperature (0.1 ºC) at the very spot where the frog was calling. We confirmed the taxonomic status of the recorded individuals by capturing them and checking dorsolateral yellow lines (Fig. 1). Voucher specimens were fixed and deposited at the herpetology section of the zoological collections of Universidade Federal do Amapá, UNIFAP, in Macapá, Amapá state, Brazil, under the numbers CECCAMPOS 0 0 293, 0 0 298 and 0 0 326. Temporal (note duration, silent interval between notes) and spectral (peak frequency, 5 – 95 % frequency bandwidth) parameters of the calls were analyzed on oscillograms and power spectra (Blackman window, frequency resolution of 80 Hz, and DFT of 1024) on Raven 1.5 software (Charif et al. 2010). We averaged parameter values from seven calls of each male. Air temperature ranged between 22.5 – 26.6 ºC and snout-to-vent length (SVL) of males between 21.2 – 23.0 mm. The advertisement call of A. pulchripecta is best described as long series of single notes (Figure 1). Note duration is 16 ± 3, 13 – 20 ms (mean ± SD, min – max, N = 7 individuals in all cases). The call frequency peaks around 3.318 ± 0.087, 3.199 – 3.445 kHz and most (90 %) energy was concentrated within 0.349 ± 0.010, 0.345 – 0.369 kHz. The upward frequency modulation within each note was negligible (Fig. 1). We found a courting pair (the female was captured and confirmed as such) allowing us to record a single call series consisting of nine three-note calls and, in between, one twonote and one single-note call. The three-note calls lasted 292 ± 23, 270 – 333 ms. The introductory note was always shorter (110 ± 2 ms), than the second (160 ± 1 ms) or the third one (160 ± 2 ms). The internote interval was 120 ± 15, 107 – 149 ms, the average silent interval between consecutive calls was 1544 ± 563, 1123 – 2422 ms and the frequency peaked at 3.273 ± 0.0 kHz (N = 9 calls of a single male). The only other species of diurnal frog producing similar calls in the study area was Allobates femoralis, which utters long bouts of four-notes calls at much lower frequency bandwidths. The call of A. hahneli has not been described from its type locality, in Yurimaguas, Peru. Calls were reported from 12 individuals of the Panguana Biological Station, Peru, 400 km south of Yurimaguas (Amézquita et al. 2011) and one individual near Iquitos (Peru), 410 km northeast of Yurimaguas (Twomey & Brown 2008). According to the Panguana data, A. pulchripecta calls generally resemble A. hahneli calls, but can be easily distinguished by their lower peak frequency: 3.318 ± 0.087 kHz in the former (N = 7 individuals) and 4.773 ± 0.138 kHz (N = 12) in the latter. Note duration is virtually identical in both species (16 ± 4 ms in A. hahneli). A formal comparison with the call of A. hahneli at other localities (or with other species in the group) is precluded by the lack of replicates. As most species of Ameerega occupy wide geographic ranges, recordings from many individuals of each species are necessary to discriminate the effect of individual, locality and evolutionary history on the variation of anuran calls.