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Male Bufo Bufo (Anura: Bufonidae) Passionately Embracing a Bulge of Mud

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Male Bufo Bufo (Anura: Bufonidae) Passionately Embracing a Bulge of Mud Correspondence ISSN 2336-9744 The journal is available on line at www.ecol-mne.com Strange affection: male Bufo bufo (Anura: Bufonidae) passionately embracing a bulge of mud SONJA ĐOR ĐEVI Ć1,2,* and ALEKSANDAR SIMOVI Ć2 1University of Belgrade, Faculty of Biology, Institute of Zoology. Studentski trg 16, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia 2Serbian Herpetological Society “Milutin Radovanovi ć”. Bulevar despota Stefana 142, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. E- mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] Received 13 March 2014 │ Accepted 20 March 2014 │ Published online 21 March 2014. On March 11 th 2014, app. between 10 AM and noon, we visited a pond on the Avala Mt. (44°40.879 ′ N, 20°33.098 ′ E, 230 m a.s.l.). Its north–northeastern portion, overgrown with reeds, was crowded with common toads, Bufo bufo (Linnaeus, 1758). Males were vocalizing, chasing females (and males), struggling to clasp them in firm grip; we observed several “mating balls” – three to ten males were vigorously fighting over a single female. On the margin of that mating frenzy, at the edge of the pond, we observed a silent, lonely male holding on to a bulge of mud (Fig. 1). He was literally motionless in that position for at least half an hour (recorded time). Figure 1. Male common toad firmly grasping a muddy protuberance (Photo: S. Đor đevi ć) Anurans are notorious for making mistakes during mating. Their erroneous amplexuses include conspecific males, dead conspecifics of both sexes, other anuran species, caudates, fish, small tortoises, etc., and even inanimate floating objects (Banta, 1914; Davies & Halliday, 1979; Pearl et al., 2005; Simovi ć et al., 2014; Storm, 1952). Explosively breeding, scramble competing common toads are no exception (Davies & Halliday, 1979; Marco & Lizana, 2002; Mollov et al., 2010; Wells, 1977). Ecol. Mont., 1 (1), 2014, 15-17 MALE BUFO BUFO EMBRACING A BULGE OF MUD In anurans, courting/mating errors sometimes result from search for a larger among the available females (e.g. Schmeller et al., 2005). Sex ratio at breeding sites is often male-biased: males arrive there earlier and stay longer than females (Davies & Halliday, 1979). Large males often choose their mates and take them in amplexus on land: when they reach the breeding pond, most females are already paired; amplexus lasts from several hours to few days (Davies & Halliday, 1979; Reading & Clarke, 1983). Smaller males are usually rejected by females or displaced by larger males during fierce fights over females (Arak, 1988; Davies & Halliday, 1979; Lamb, 1984). Overall, for male anurans, courtship and mating are expensive in terms of energy, time and predation risk (e.g. McCauley et al., 2000). Despite extensive literature search, we could not find any previous report of a toad holding on to a piece of soil. Wet soil is huge, and is more toad-like than, e.g. a plastic cup (Mollov et al., 2010), but it is not floating or moving. We find it hard to imagine how a piece of the pond bank – although probably soaked with various hormones – could resemble a living, gravid female (Banta, 1914; Yu & Lu, 2013). Numerous seasonally oscillating hormones (similar/identical to those of other vertebrates) were shown to dictate reproductive behaviour in male and female anurans (Propper & Dixon, 1997; Wilczynski et al., 2005; Wilczynski & Lynch, 2011). During the reproductive season, potential mates communicate via pheromones as well as through visual, tactile and auditory signals (Belanger & Corkum, 2009; Pearl et al., 2000; Wabnitz et al., 1999). Male mating hormones and behaviours were more widely studied than those of females (Pearl et al., 2000, but see Wilczynski & Lynch, 2011). Also, information concerning roles of various other factors (environmental conditions, social interactions, personalities of individual males, female mate choice, etc.) and their interplay with acoustic and chemical communication is still scarce (Han & Brooks, 2013; Propper & Dixon, 1997; Smith & Blumstein, 2008; Wilczynski et al., 2005). In short, a pond in which anurans court and mate becomes a highly complex arena, a thick soup packed with pheromones, over which hovers an cacophony of mating offers and invitations. One can easily get confused. Especially if you are not among the largest, strongest and loudest in the crowd of males, you may “decide” to seek for something you could hug, for a bit of cold comfort. References Arak, A. (1988) Female mate selection in the natterjack toad: active choice or passive attraction? Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology , 22(5), 317–327. Banta, A.M. (1914) Sex recognition and the mating behavior of the Wood frog, Rana sylvatica . Biological Bulletin , 26, 171–183. Belanger, R.M. & Corkum, L.D. (2009) Review of aquatic sex pheromones and chemical communication in Anurans. Journal of Herpetology , 43(2), 184–191. Davies, N.B. & Halliday, T.R. (1979) Competitive mate searching in male Common toads, Bufo bufo . Animal Behaviour , 27, 1253–1267. Han, C.S. & Brooks, R.C. (2013) Evolution of individual variation in behaviour and behavioural plasticity under scramble competition. Animal Behaviour , 86, 435–442. Lamb, T. (1984) Amplexus displacement in the Southern toad, Bufo terrestris . Copeia , 1984(4), 1023–1025. Marco, A. & Lizana, M. (2002) The absence of species and sex recognition during mate search by male Common toads, Bufo bufo . Ethology, Ecology and Evolution , 14, 1–8. McCauley, S.J., Bouchard, S.S., Farina, B.J., Isvaran, K., Quader, S., Wood, D.W. & St. Mary, C.M. (2000) Energetic dynamics and anuran breeding phenology: insights from a dynamic game. Behavioral Ecology , 11, 429–436. Mollov, I.A., Popgeorgiev, G.S., Naumov, B.Y., Tzankov, N.D. & Stoyanov, A.Y. (2010) Cases of abnormal amplexus in anurans (Amphibia: Anura) from Bulgaria and Greece. Biharean Biologist , 4, 121–125. Pearl, C.A., Cervantes, M., Chan, M., Ho, U., Shoji, R. & Thomas, E.O. (2000) Evidence for a mate- attracting chemosignal in the dwarf African clawed frog Hymenochirus . Hormones and Behavior , 38, 67–74. Pearl, C.A., Hayes, M.P., Haycock, R., Engler, J.D. & Bowerman, J. (2005) Observations of interspecific amplexus between western North American ranid frogs and the introduced American bullfrog ( Rana catesbeiana ) and an hypothesis concerning breeding interference. The American Midland Naturalist , 154, 126–134. 16 ĐOR ĐEVI Ć & SIMOVI Ć Propper, C.R. & Dixon, T.B. (1997) Differential effects of arginine vasotocin and gonadotropin-releasing hormone on sexual behaviors in an anuran amphibian. Hormones and Behavior , 32, 99–104. Reading, C.J. & Clarke, R.T. (1983) Male breeding behaviour and mate acquisition in the Common toad, Bufo bufo . Journal of Zoology, London , 201, 237–246. Schmeller, D.S., O’Hara, R. & Kokko, H. (2005) Male adaptive stupidity: male mating pattern in hybridogenetic frogs. Evolutionary Ecology Research , 7, 1039–1050. Simovi ć, A., Anderson, N., An đelkovi ć, M., Gvozdenovi ć, S. & Đor đevi ć, S. (2014) Unusual amplexuses between anurans and caudates. Herpetology Notes , 7, 25–29. Smith, B.R. & Blumstein, D.T. (2008) Fitness consequences of personality: a meta-analysis. Behavioral Ecology , 19, 448–455. Storm, R.M. (1952) Interspecific mating behaviour in Rana aurora and Rana catesbeiana . Herpetologica , 8 (3), 108. Wabnitz, P.A., Bowie, J.H., Tyler, M.J., Wallace, J.C. & Smith, B.P. (1999) Aquatic sex pheromone from a male tree frog. Nature , 401, 444–445. Wells, K.D. (1977) The social behaviour of anuran amphibians. Animal Behaviour , 25, 666–693. Wilczynski, W. & Lynch, K.S. (2011) Female sexual arousal in amphibians. Hormones and Behavior , 59(5), 630–636. Wilczynski, W., Lynch, K.S. & O’Bryant, E.L. (2005) Current research in amphibians: Studies integrating endocrinology, behavior, and neurobiology. Hormones and Behavior , 48(4), 440–450. Yu, T.L. & Lu, X. (2013) Lack of male mate choice in the Minshan’s toad ( Bufo gargarizans minshanicus ). North-Western Journal of Zoology , 9 (1), 121–126. Ecol. Mont., 1 (1), 2014, 15-17 .
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