bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/771287; this version posted September 16, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. 1 Sexual dichromatism in the neotropical genus Mannophryne (Anura: Aromobatidae) 2 Mark S. Greener1*, Emily Hutton2, Christopher J. Pollock3, Annabeth Wilson2, Chun Yin Lam2, Mohsen 3 Nokhbatolfoghahai 2, Michael J. Jowers4, and J. Roger Downie2 4 1Department of Pathology, Bacteriology and Avian Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent 5 University, B-9820 Merelbeke, Belgium. 6 2 School of Life Sciences, Graham Kerr Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK. 7 3 School of Biology, Faculty of Biological sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. 8 4 CIBIO/InBIO (Centro de Investigacao em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genticos), Universide do Porto , 9 Vairao 4485-661, Portugal. 10 *
[email protected] 11 ABSTRACT 12 Recent reviews on sexual dichromatism in frogs included Mannophryne trinitatis as the only example 13 they could find of dynamic dichromatism (males turn black when calling) within the family 14 Aromobatidae and found no example of ontogenetic dichromatism in this group. We demonstrate 15 ontogenetic dichromatism in M. trinitatis by rearing post-metamorphic froglets to near maturity: the 16 throats of all individuals started as grey coloured; at around seven weeks, the throat became pale 17 yellow in some, and more strongly yellow as development proceeded; the throats of adults are grey 18 in males and variably bright yellow in females, backed by a dark collar.