Allobates femoralis facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Allobates femoralis |
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Allobates
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femoralis
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| Distribution map of Allobates femoralis | |
Allobates femoralis (common name brilliant-thighed poison frog, brilliant-thighed poison-arrow frog) is a species of frog in the family Aromobatidae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, and Suriname. Its natural habitat is tropical lowland forests.
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Description
Allobates femoralis is a small frog, the males growing to 28 to 33 mm (1.1 to 1.3 in) in length and the females being marginally larger. The coloration on the back is dark brown or black and the limbs are colored dark brown. The throat is black and the belly is white, marked with black. A pale brown dorso-lateral stripe runs from the snout to the base of the legs and an intermittent white ventro-lateral line runs from the snout to the arm and onwards to the leg. There is an orange-yellow patch behind the arm and a half-moon shaped orange patch on the outside of the thigh. A. femoralis resembles Lithodytes lineatus in general appearance, but L. lineatus has a dorso-lateral line encircling the back, legs barred with dark and light bands of colour, and two or more orange patches on each thigh.
Habitat and distribution
Allobates femoralis is distributed in the Amazon basin and tropical eastern South America. Its geographical range includes Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and Brazil, and the eastern parts of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. A single reported sighting in Venezuela may have referred to Ameerega picta. It is found on the forest floor, usually at elevations below 300 m (1,000 ft), but in Colombia and Ecuador occurs at altitudes of up to 1,000 m (3,300 ft).
Biology
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Allobates femoralis is a terrestrial frog species. It is active during the day, and it feeds on small insects such as beetles, crickets, roaches and ants; the juveniles largely feed on springtails. Breeding takes place between November and April, peaking in January or February. The males are territorial and court females for two to three days before a clutch of eight to seventeen eggs is laid in a nest among fallen leaves. The male guards the eggs, and after they have hatched, he carries the tadpoles to pools of water on his back.
Mating and reproduction
Courtship behavior
The pair is formed when the male sees a female A. femoralis. He then leads her to the site, which is always covered, to lay eggs. Usually, the female lays clutches of eggs between dead leaves or beneath a log. The leaves or the log thus form a roof over the clutch. This behavior known as the "courtship march" refers to when the male initiates the courtship and the female follows him to the oviposition site.
Male A. femoralis can court more than one female A. femoralis. When the male courts two females, he marches alternately with each female, and while the male courts one female, the other female stays in the spot where the male conducted her before moving on to his current courtship interaction. And the females sharing courtship with the same male do not interact aggressively with each other.
Male/male interactions
Unlike females that do not show aggression under polygyny, A. femoralis males interact aggressively with other males when it comes to territorial defense. During the 'courtship march' when an A. femoralis male searches for an ovipostion site, the female can be intercepted by a competing male, which the female will start following. This leads to physical aggression between males that can last about 15 minutes, where eventually, one of the males will leave the oviposition site. It is suggested that visual signals play an important role in male-male aggression.
When the male climbs on the female's back, egg laying begins. After that, the male remains in the oviposition site next to the female for about 2.6 minutes on average and leaves the site. On the other hand, the female remains in the site for about 51 minutes on average and circles around the eggs.
Parental care
Tadpole transport
The tadpole development must happen in a water area large and deep enough, so male A. femoralis must search for sites that are suitable for tadpole development. Usually, such sites are far away from their own territory. Males transport tadpoles as far as 180 m away from their own territory, and the more distant the deposition site is, the more tadpoles males transport each time. Since the time it takes to shuttle tadpoles comes with a cost of losing territories and reproductive opportunities, this activity requires A. femoralis to have strong spatial memory and learning and the ability to use the learning flexibly in terms of processing information about distances and directions, finding new routes in familiar and unfamiliar area, and ultimately navigating themselves and finding the most ideal route for transport.
A. femoralis routinely shuttle tadpoles from terrestrial territories to dispersed aquatic deposition sites. This can take from several hours to days. While the tadpole transport is mainly done by males, females are also observed to shuttle tadpoles in cases of mate loss.
Returning back to the original male territory after tadpole transport is known as the homing performance. Failure of homing performance (failing to return to the original male territory) would cause a severe cost in reproductive output due to loss of clutches, Therefore, having good spatial learning and directionality is crucial in A. femoralis.
Conservation status
The IUCN lists Allobates femoralis as being of "Least Concern" regarding conservation status. This is because it has a wide range and is common throughout much of that range. Its population seems to be steady and no particular threats have been identified.
