Vocalizations of Rhinella sebbeni Vaz-Silva, Maciel, Bastos, and Pombal, 2015 (Anura: Bufonidae)

Abstract

Acoustic signals are used in diverse social contexts by frogs and serve as relevant tools for studies on evolution, description and identification of species. Here, we described the advertisement, aggressive and release calls of Rhinella sebbeni, a poorly known toad from the Rhinella margaritifera species group. The description of the vocal repertoire of R. sebbeni was based on eight males from the municipality of Terezópolis de Goiás, State of Goiás, Brazil. Calling activity of R. sebbeni is crepuscular and calls consist of non-harmonic pulsed notes. The advertisement call classified as type II, had an average duration of 0.299 s and dominant frequency of 1,266 Hz. Aggressive call duration was 0.288 s and dominant frequency of 1,292 Hz. Finally, the release call duration was 0.021 s and dominant frequency 979 Hz. We found that advertisement call of R. sebbeni and its calling activity were similar to those of other species in the R. margaritifera group. We argued that release calls are useful for identification in this taxonomically complex group. We also emphasize the importance of acoustic and natural history data to help clarify the taxonomic status of species belonging to groups such as R. margaritifera.