CALL STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITY PERIOD OF PRISTIMANTIS FESTAE, A HIGH-ELEVATION ANURAN IN ECUADOR

Perhaps the most well-studied aspect of anuran communication, vocalizations play an integral role in mate attraction (Littlejohn 1977; Gerhardt 1991; Tobias et al. 1998), demarcation of territory (Wagner 1989; Byrne 2009), and myriad other social interactions (Wells 1977; Wells and Schwartz 2007). Environmental factors such as temperature and humidity, as well as individual intrinsic factors such as size, are known to cause variations in call frequency and duration (Lingnau and Bastos 2007; De Toledo et al. 2009; Costa and Toledo 2013). However, the majority of variation is caused by changes in behavioral context. The genus Pristimantis (Craugastoridae) has undergone extensive taxonomic revision and contains ca. 530 currently recognized species (Hedges et al. 2008; Frost 2019). As with most members of this group, species of Pristimantis are highly cryptic, reclusive, and almost exclusively nocturnal (Lynch and Duellman 1997). For this reason, species data on calls and behavior are sparse (Duellman and Lehr 2009).