Parental care communication in the neotropical foam-nesting frogs Leptodactylus (Anura, Leptodactylidae): from behavioural to omic perspectives

Abstract

Parental care is defined as an evolutive advantage to increases offspring survival, as a benefit for the offspring fitness. In amphibians, parental care varies in terms of time of care and effort, in particular, the attending females of Leptodactylus (Leptodactylidae) attend eggs and aquatic tadpoles for a long term. Attendance includes tadpole guidance that is mediated by female-offspring communication. This communication was first described as a stereotyped behaviour named pumping behaviour, in which females hit the water with the pelvis to create waves to which tadpoles response following and biting the females. This type of communication (e.g. mechanical, chemical) is only know from behavioural observations, and the signals and genetic mechanism involved are poorly known. In this thesis I described diverse aspects of the parental care communication in the foam-nesting frogs (Anura: Leptodactylidae) by behavioural and omics approaches. In Chapter 1, I reviewed what is currently known about the parental care in Leptodactylus. In Chapter 2, I reviewed the knowledge of the skin secretions from the species of Leptodactylidae. In Chapter 3, I studied how the attending females signals and conspecific cues affect the tadpole school behaviour. In Chapter 4, I identified a group of chemical signals exclusive of the attending females with potential for the communication with the tadpoles. Finally, in Chapter 5 I identified the up regulated genes of the attending females, in order to related them with diverse physiological changes. Experimentally, we determined what triggers the tadpole’s aggregation and attraction to attending females of Leptodactylus podicipinus and L. macrosternum. Additionally, we found differences in the skin composition of attending females, non-attending females and males. And we identified a set of upregulated genes from the attending females’ skin that may trigger the expression of the chemical signals involving the attending female and offspring communication, and the anatomical changes of the skin of L. podicipinus during parental care. Using novel analytical technics, we made advances on the understanding of chemical communication and genetic adaptation during parental care, opening a large unexplored area of knowledge that can be apply for other species of Leptodactylus and anurans for evolutionary research.