Environmental and biotic influences: understanding the acoustic diversity in communities of anuran amphibians in Atlantic Forest
Communities can be defined as populations occurring together over time and space. The processes related to the permanence of such populations could be studied from the assembly rules perspective. Species diversity can be measured by species diversity and phylogenetic diversity. Phylogenetic structure of communities allow us to infer the processes related to assembly rules. Another way to measure the diversity of a community is to consider its functional attributes, including the 'soundscape', defined as the relationship between environment and sounds produced by its species. It has been explored how soundscapes vary across different communities. Anuran amphibians are ideal models for studies on soundscape in biological communities, as they form choirs and present vocalization behavior for attracting females. We aim to investigate the acoustic diversity in anuran communities along the Atlantic Forest in southeastern Brazil, by the following questions: (i) how the acoustic space is occupied by species in different communities? (ii) how phylogenetic structure of these communities are related to acoustic diversity? and (iii) widely distributed species in Atlantic Forest modulate their vocalizations according to environmental complexity and/or soundscape? Data collection was carried out in Atlantic Forest, in ten ponds, between September 2018 and March 2019. We collected information on phylogenetic and acoustic diversity of species in each locality. Partial results include updating the advertisement call of 19 recorded species, the description of the advertisement call of Boana semilineata, and the description of the soundscape for each community. We also investigated the advertisement call variation for widely distributed species including Boana faber, Physalaemus cuvieri and Scinax hayii in different scenarios of environmental complexity.