We report in the present study the occurrence of contracting defensive behaviour in three treefrogs of the genus Phyllomedusa: P. azurea, P. iheringii and P. tetraploidea. It consisted of limbs bent close to the body, dorsum arched with the head towards the belly, and eyes partially closed. This behaviour was previously unreported for P. iheringii and P. tetraploidea and it seems to be a passive defensive strategy against snakes or other predators, characteristic of phyllomedusine frogs.Fil: Borteiro, Claudio. Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Montevideo; UruguayFil: Baldo, Juan Diego. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Nordeste. Instituto de Biología Subtropical. Instituto de Biología Subtropical - Nodo Posadas; ArgentinaFil: Kunz, Tobias Saraiva. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Perez, Renata. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Petry Eltz, Rodrigo. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; BrasilFil: Kolenc, Francisco. Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Montevideo; Urugua

Baldo, Juan Diego

Borteiro, Claudio

Kolenc, Francisco

Kunz, Tobias Saraiva

Perez, Renata

Petry Eltz, Rodrigo

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Amphibians are a common prey for several animal taxa and also have a wide variety of anti-predator mechanisms, such as cryptic and deimatic colouration, toxic skin secretions, and stereotyped behaviours (Duellman and Trueb 1986). One of these defensive strategies in Neotropical anurans is the “shrinking behaviour”, first reported briefly by Bokermann (1965) for the hylid frog Phyllomedusa centralis. Some years later Sazima (1974) further described this behaviour in P. rohdei experimentally faced with a snake predator, and presented a picture in which an adult frog appears with the dorsum arched and the four limbs contracted. This behaviour was also documented in other species of Phyllomedusa (Toledo, Sazima and Haddad 2010), who named it shrinking or contracting behaviour (see also Toledo, Sazima and Haddad 2011). The authors indicate that frogs displaying this posture remain motionless, generally with the eyes closed, the limbs bent close to the body, sometimes the dorsum and head arched ventrally. We report here similar observations in three species of this genus: P. azurea, P. iheringii, and P. tetraploidea. Field observations were made on an adult specimen of P. azurea, an adult male of P. iheringii found walking on an unpaved road of a hilly area, and an adult male of P. tetraploidea found calling on the vegetation about 1 m from a pond. In all three cases, frogs exhibited the defensive behaviour when being handled, immediately after capture. They remained immobile, with the four limbs bent close to the body, the dorsum was slightly arched, as well as the head, towards the belly, and the eyes were partially closed (Figure 1). The specimen of P. iheringii was transferred to a plastic bag after being photographed, and remained in this posture for at least 15 min, the specimen of P. azurea for a few minutes, and the specimen of P. tetraploidea remained only a few seconds in this posture after handled. Collected specimens were euthanized with lidocaine, and deposited in the following herpetological collections: Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Montevideo, Uruguay, MNHN; Colección Diego Baldo of Museo de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina; Departamento de Zoologia da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (Table 1).The defensive display observed by us in P. azurea, P. iheringii, and P. tetraploidea is the same shown in the available illustrations of previous reports on contracting behaviour in species of Phyllomedusa: P. bahiana (Toledo et al. 2010), P. rohdei (Sazima 1974), and P. venusta (Escobar-Lasso & González-Durán 2012). Toledo, Sazima and Haddad (2010) reported contracting behaviour for the first time in P. azurea (without photographs), and its occurrence also in P. bahiana, P. burmeisteri, P. distincta, and P. nordestina. These authors suggested that this behaviour is possibly characteristic of phyllomedusines, as it was reported in several species of Phyllomedusa and also Phrynomedusa marginata (see taxonomy in Faivovich et al. 2010). Its occurrence in other phyllomedusinae deserves further study to determine if the contracting Herpetology Notes, volume 7: 393-395 (2014) (published online on 18 June 2014)Contracting behaviour in three species of Phyllomedusa  (Anura: Hylidae: Phyllomedusinae)Claudio Borteiro1,*, Diego Baldo2, Tobias Saraiva Kunz3, Renata Perez3, Rodrigo Petry Eltz3 and Francisco Kolenc11 Sección Herpetología, Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, 25 de mayo 582, Montevideo, Uruguay. 2 Laboratorio de Genética Evolutiva, Instituto de Biología Subtropical (CONICET-UNaM), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Químicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Misiones, Félix de Azara 1552, Posadas, Misiones, Argentina. 3 Laboratório de Herpetologia, Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biociências and Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Animal, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. * Corresponding author, C. Borteiro, E-mail: borteiro@gmail.combehaviour constitutes a plesiomorphic condition in this subfamily or evolved independently several times.It is noteworthy that adult specimens of P. rohdei displaying this defensive strategy swallowed by a snake were regurgitated soon afterwards – maybe due to the effect of toxic skin secretions on the predator – and survived (Sazima 1974). Contracting behaviour seems to be present mostly in toxic anuran species (Toledo et al. 2010), and its association with skin toxins is likely an effective defensive strategy against snakes and eventually other kind of predators.Claudio Borteiro et al.394Figure 1. Contracting behaviour in Phyllomedusa: P.azurea MLP DB 6286 (left), P. iheringii MNHN 9491 (upper right) and P. tetraploidea UFRGS 6902 (lower right).1Table 1. Collection data of specimens. 1Species and voucher specimen Collection site Date and time of observation P. azurea (MLP DB 6286) Pirané, Formosa Province, Argentina (25º40'S, 59º04'W). 18 November 2007, 23:00 h. P. iheringii (MNHN 9491) Quebrada de los Cuervos, Departamento de Treinta y Tres, Uruguay (32º59'S, 54º27'W). 9 October 2012, 22:00 h. P. tetraploidea (UFRGS 6902) Municipality of Chapecó, near the margin of the Uruguay River, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil (27º16'S, 52º42'W). 9 December 2013, 20:45 h. 2Table 1. Collection data of specimens.Contracting behaviour in Phyllomedusa 395Acknowledgements. CB and FK acknowledge ANII/SNI. TSK thanks CNPq for financial support. Martín Pereyra and Vinicius Matheus Caldart kindly reviewed the manuscript.ReferencesBokermann, W.C.A. (1965): Três novos batráquios da região central de Mato Grosso, Brasil (Amphibia, Salientia). Revista Brasileira de Biologia 25: 257-264.Duellman, W.E., Trueb, L. (1994): Biology of amphibians. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London.Escobar-Lasso, S., González-Duran, G.A. (2012): Strategies em-ployed by three Neotropical frogs (Amphibia: Anura) to avoid predation. Herpetology Notes 5: 79-84.Faivovich, J., Haddad, C.F.B., Baêta, D., Jungfer, K.H., Álvares, G.F.R., Brandão, R.A., Sheil, C., Barrientos, L.S., Barrio-Amorós, C.L., Cruz, C.A.G., Wheeler, W.C. (2010): The phy-logenetic relationships of the charismatic poster frogs, Phyllo-medusinae (Anura, Hylidae). Cladistics 26: 227-261.Sazima, I. (1974): Experimental predation on the Leaf-frog Phyl-lomedusa rohdei by the water snake Liophis miliaris. Journal of Herpetology 8: 376-377.Toledo, L.F., Sazima, I., Haddad, C.F.B. (2010): Is it all death feigning? Case in anurans. Journal of Natural History 44: 1979-1988.Toledo, L.F., Sazima, I., Haddad, C.F.B. (2011): Behavioural de-fences of anurans: an overview. Ethology, Ecology & Evolu-tion 23: 1-25.Accepted by Diogo Provete

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Contracting behaviour in three species of Phyllomedusa (Anura: Hylidae: Phyllomedusinae)

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Contracting behaviour in three species of Phyllomedusa (Anura: Hylidae: Phyllomedusinae)

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