Data, Walker, 1862

Furtado, Raíssa, Márquez, Rafael & Hartz, Sandra Maria, 2016, In front of a mirror: visual displays may not be aggressive signals in nocturnal tree frogs, Journal of Natural History 51 (7 - 8), pp. 443-454 : 446-447

Data collection

We observed males of H. raniceps (36 minutes of recordings; six males), D. nanus (36 minutes of recordings; six males) and L. limellum (30 minutes of recordings; five males) in natural conditions, using focal animal sampling ( Lehner 1996). Observations began at 20:00, generally 2 hours after the first males started to call. Individuals were selected arbitrarily, mainly those that were in a suitable position either on the ground or on vegetation and at least 3 m distant from other males, and were located with a common flashlight. After the focal animal was selected, all flashlights were turned off to reduce the stress on the animal, and images were captured using a video camera (Panasonic HC-W850) with infrared light, positioned at least 1 m from the focal animal. Visual displays emitted by focal individuals of each species are represented by short videos available in the Supplementary Online Material.

To simulate the presence of an intruder, the experiment consisted of two treatments for each resident male: (1) Self Image, a mirror (14 × 8 cm) supported by a retractable handle 1 m long, positioned in the visual field of the resident male; and (2) Control, with the mirror completely covered with a black rectangle (14 × 8 cm). The mirror was 25 – 30 cm from the actively calling resident male, at an angle of approximately 45° in relation to the male ’ s body position to avoid a possible blind spot at 0° (directly in front of the animal, Fite 1973). The reflection of the animal in the mirror simulated the presence of an intruder male ( Lindquist and Hetherington 1998; Haddad and Giaretta 1999; Furtado and Nomura 2014; Figure 2 ). Each individual was subjected to each treatment. Each treatment lasted 3 minutes, with 2-minute intervals between treatments. The order of treatments was previously randomized for each focal animal.

The visual responses were classified according to motor patterns described by Hödl and Amézquita (2001) and Hartmann et al. (2005). We described the behavioural limellum during agonistic interactions.

repertoires of males of H. raniceps , D. nanus and L. limellum during agonistic interactions ( Table 1) and we calculated the mean emission rate per minute per behaviour in each treatment. For the vocal-sac display we calculated the proportion between display time and total treatment time.

Figures

Figure 2. Self Image treatment applied to a male of Hypsiboas raniceps in the southeastern Pantanal, Corumbá, state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. The reflection of the animal in the mirror (14 × 8 cm), positioned at an angle of approximately 45° in relation to the male’s body position, simulated the presence of an intruder male in the resident’s territory.