Parental care of underwater egg clutches in Andean water frogs (Anura: Telmatobiidae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The most generalized reproductive mode in anurans is the deposition of egg clutches in water that develop into exotrophic aquatic tadpoles. Yet, despite this extended distribution, cases of parental care on submerged egg clutches are poorly documented. Because of its high diversity, its aquatic habits, and reports on males of two species standing next to the clutch, the Andean genus Telmatobius Wiegmann, 1834 offers an excellent model to examine the evolution of such behavior and the factors influencing it. Here, we combine field and laboratory studies to describe the breeding biology and parental care behavior in Telmatobius culeus (Garman, 1876), Telmatobius hintoni Parker, 1940, Telmatobius intermedius Vellard, 1951, Telmatobius jelskii (Peters, 1873), and Telmatobius oxycephalus Vellard, 1946. Our findings indicate that these five species have prolonged breeding season, and use concealed underwater shelters between rocks or macrophytes for mating and egg deposition. We showed that clutches of 35–560 eggs are deposited in these shelters. Males were observed next to the egg clutch and defending it aggressively against intruders, including conspecifics. Females were, on average, larger than males supporting the hypothesis that competition among males does not drive sexual size dimorphism in the genus. Our findings provide meaningful data to use in conservation programs, given that most species of Telmatobius are considered endangered and fill a significant information gap in understanding parental care’s origin in Nobleobatrachia.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".