About Allobates femoralis (Boulenger, 1884)
Allobates femoralis is a small frog species. Males grow to 28 to 33 mm (1.1 to 1.3 in) in snout length, and females are slightly larger. The back is dark brown or black, with dark brown limbs. The throat is black, and the white belly is marked with black. A pale brown dorso-lateral stripe runs from the snout to the base of the legs, and an intermittent white ventro-lateral line runs from the snout past the arm to the leg. There is an orange-yellow patch behind the arm, and a half-moon shaped orange patch on the outer side of the thigh. A. femoralis has a similar general appearance to Lithodytes lineatus, but L. lineatus has a dorso-lateral line that encircles the back, legs marked with alternating dark and light bands, and two or more orange patches on each thigh. Allobates femoralis is distributed across the Amazon basin and tropical eastern South America. Its confirmed range includes Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Brazil, and the eastern parts of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. A single reported sighting from Venezuela may instead refer to Ameerega picta. This species lives on the forest floor. It is most commonly found at elevations below 300 m (1,000 ft), but can occur at up to 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in Colombia and Ecuador. Allobates femoralis is known for its complex behavior and diverse reproductive and parental care strategies, and is particularly well-studied for the fine-scale space use of its non-territorial females, which do not participate in acoustic or visual displays. In general, females of this species move very little, and spend most of their time in one to three small activity centers. Even when they leave these activity centers, they do not engage in wide-ranging exploratory behavior. Multiple factors significantly influence female movement and space use: subsequent mating events, reproductive behavior, temperature, and cumulative rainfall. On afternoons of days when courtship begins, when male calling activity is at its peak, female movement increases considerably. Researchers suggest this mating-related movement is influenced by acoustic cues. After mating, females leave the oviposition site in the morning when male calling activity is low, leading researchers to conclude that factors other than male vocalization affect where females travel after mating. Temperature and cumulative rainfall both influence the daily movement of A. femoralis females. Female movement increases at lower temperatures and with higher cumulative precipitation. Tropical environmental temperatures often fall near the upper thermal limits for amphibians, which makes this species susceptible to climate change, as environmental temperature impacts physiological function and in turn shapes female behavior. Cumulative rainfall is strongly correlated with male calling activity. On a seasonal scale, male calling activity is higher during wet months, and most reproduction occurs in the late wet season. Reproduction is less frequent and sporadic in the dry season, and these rare dry-season reproductive events are likely triggered by isolated rainfall events. Because male vocal signals influence female mating behavior, rainfall indirectly affects female movement by altering mating-related behavior. As rainfall is seasonal, its influence is tied to the timing of female movement. Contrary to the factors listed above, the density of surrounding males does not correlate with female time allocation or space use. Overall, travel distances and activity patterns on courtship and mating days differ greatly from those on non-reproductive days. The increased travel distances seen on courtship and mating days indicate that reproductive behavior is an important driver of increased female movement.
