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THE ADVERTISEMENT CALL OF LEPTODACTYLUS LATICEPS (AMPHIBIA, ANURA, LEPTODACTYLIDAE): PREDATORY AURAL LURING?

Aggressive mimicry, where a predator deceives its victim by imitating something desirable, is a fascinating phenomenon that has been well documented in arthropods (e.g., fireflies—Lloyd 1981; jumping spiders—Jackson and Wilcox 1998). We do not know of any case of aggressive mimicry in frogs, but may have found such a system operating in the Gran Chaco of South America. Some frog predators use advertisement calls of the prey species to locate their prey (e.g., bats—Ryan 1985: Chapter 8), including frogs (Bufo marinus and Leptodactylus pentadactylus feeding on Physalaemus pustulosus—Rand 1983:414). We know of no instance where a frog uses its advertisement call as a lure to attract prey. We present data that are consistent with the hypothesis that male L. laticeps not only use their advertisement calls to attract conspecific females, but also as an aural lure to attract L. bufonius, upon which they have been shown to prey. Leptodactylus laticeps (Fig. 1A) is a species characteristic of the Gran Chaco of South America. The species produces toxic skin secretions and has bright coloration and aggressive behavior, presumably aposematic in function (Cei 1980; Scott and Aquino, in press). Leptodactylus laticeps often cooccurs with viscachas (Lagostomus maximus: Rodentia), and uses their burrow systems, including calling from the burrow entrances (Lavilla et al. 1995). To date, neither advertisement call nor larvae of L. laticeps have been described. Although Eterovick and Sazima (2000: Table 1) reported the call of L. laticeps as unpulsed, this is a mistake and refers to L. labyrinthicus instead (P. Eterovick, pers. comm.). Herein, we describe the advertisement call of L. laticeps. Leptodactylus laticeps is a member of the L. pentadactylus species group (Heyer 1979), but its call has features similar in many respects to those of L. bufonius (Fig. 1B), a L. fuscus group member. We suggest that the advertisement call of L. laticeps acts as an aural lure to attract female L. bufonius as prey, in addition to attracting female L. laticeps. We further propose that the call of L. laticeps underwent selective pressure to be similar enough to the advertisement call of L. bufonius as to serve as an aural lure for female L. bufonius.