Nocturnal visual displays and call description of the cascade specialist glassfrog Sachatamia orejuela

What is it about?

Most people have heard male frogs calling to attract a mate on a summer evening. But did you know that some species also dance? A few frog species around the world have evolved to make sure that females pay attention to them by waving their legs and/or arms. They do this to counter the loud background noise (often waterfalls or rushing streams). Each of these species belong to different families on different continents: an amazing example of how the same behaviors can evolve in very different species when faced with similar environmental conditions (i.e. convergent evolution). In this paper, we describe the first account of a glassfrog species (amazing frogs that have transparent bellies) displaying this sort of behaviour, as well as the first record of its call. The fact that we observed these behaviours at night is also quite interesting (most of the other dancing species display during the day), since recent experiments have shown that frogs can see colours remarkably well in the dark.

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