Leaf litter and phytotelmata, for example, serve as primary breeding sites, shelters, and nurseries for poison frogs; in addition to being defendable resources for territorial species, they provide more stable temperature and humidity conditions than open areas with little canopy.
These findings provide credence to a hitherto unrecognized function of noise on streams as a selection force encouraging a rise in call frequency and pleiotropic changes in body size.
Studies in progress reveal at least three novel classes of toxic alkaloids in skin secretions of Neotropical dendrobatid frogs include Batrachotoxins, Pumiliotoxins, and Histrionicotoxins.
He keeps them moist and rotates them occasionally and after two to four weeks he carries them on his back and deposits them singly in small temporary water pools in such places as hollows in trees, water-filled bromeliad rosettes and bamboo stalks.
It is fully protected in its native country, considered critically endangered by the IUCN and listed on CITES Appendix II.
[8] Threats to its survival are the degradation of its habitat due to timber extraction and illegal agriculture, and collection for the pet trade.
The introduction of invasive species, the overexploitation of wild populations, and the spread of infectious illnesses have all been connected to the trade in amphibians.
Early in the 1970s, aquarium hobbyists in Germany and the Netherlands were the first to commercially sell poison frogs, along with tropical species exported from South America.
As the pet reptile business grew, English-language literature detailing the management of poison frogs in captivity started to appear in the middle of the 1980s.
Simultaneously, private collectors in the United States and Europe generally agree that many regularly preserved poison frogs were first obtained illegally.
First, male calling behavior may eventually become unsustainable because to the known higher temperatures and radiation levels in human-made gaps compared to other forest areas.
This is due to the fact that males would be more exposed under deteriorated settings, which increases the risk of overheating and higher evaporative water loss.
In the medium to long term, males would not be able to dedicate as much time to attracting females and announcing territory ownership, which is a behavioral consequence of these physiological stressors.
Second, changes in the amount of light in the forest can also affect an animal's look, which has been shown to be important for some lekking bird species' courtship behavior.
Similarly, it has been demonstrated that the detectability of the changing color patterns in D. tinctorius varies according on whether they are observed under an open or closed canopy.
Although the majority of research on this has focused on predator-prey interactions, species for which color patterns influence mate choice or underlie behavioral variations like boldness or aggression may find these differences in detectability in response to light environment especially pertinent.
Crucially, modification of the ecosystem by humans may impact not only the light environment but also the forest floor's structure, which may change detectability and visual contrast and potentially interfere with conspecifics' ability to communicate.