Nature is beautiful, and even though sometimes it can be brutal, it always finds a way to make things work. Such is the case of a species of Ecuadorian glass frog and how they¡¯ve adapted to living in a loud environment.
It is no secret that frogs croak to get noticed, but if there is a lot of noise in the environment, these croaks can go unheard -- environments like waterfalls or rivers. To circumvent this challenge, these frogs have evolved to supplementary advertising techniques -- basically visual actions -- to get noticed.?
This is according to?recent research published in Behaviour Documents that has documented this novel strategy in the glass frog family of Sachatamia Orejuela -- a species that are only found in Ecuador and Columbia.?
The mating calls for the frogs weren¡¯t recorded before due to their rare, secluded presence, however,? when one Rebecca Brunner, a PhD student at UC Berkeley (the first author of the paper) finally found one, she was surprised to see how it functions.
She said, ¡°I was already over the moon because I had finally found a calling male after months of searching. Before our publication, there was no official record of this species¡¯ call, and basic information like that is really important for conservation. But then I saw it start doing these little waves, and I knew that I was observing something even more special.¡±
She saw the frog wave its hands and feet and move his head in a particular fashion and while recording this, she saw another frog do the exact same thing, a few metres away.?
Brunner added, ¡°This is a really exhilarating discovery because it¡¯s a perfect example of how an environment¡¯s soundscape can influence the species that live there. We¡¯ve found that Sachatamia Orejuela has an extremely high-pitched call, which helps it communicate above the lower-pitched white noise of waterfalls. And then to discover that it also waves its hands and feet to increase its chances of being noticed¡ªthat¡¯s a behaviour I¡¯ve always loved reading about in textbooks, so it is beyond thrilling to be able to share another amazing example with the world.¡±
Brunner also revealed that there are quite a few frog species that are known to use such visual signalling along with high-pitched calls, but what¡¯s surprising is that they¡¯re not as closely related to each other, which indicates it likely evolved independently with the response to similar environments.