Barking up the wrong frog: global prevalence of misdirected amplexus in anuran amphibians

Abstract

Abstract Reproduction is an energy-expensive life process in many organisms, and accurate conspecific recognition is crucial to successful reproduction. Nonetheless, misdirected attempts at amplexus towards heterospecifics appear to be common in many anuran amphibians. Such reproductive interference can have significant ecological and evolutionary consequences, but its prevalence remains unknown. Here, we compile a global dataset of anuran misdirected amplexus and test how phylogenetic relatedness, ecological niche, breeding phenology, and geography influence the prevalence of anuran misdirected amplexus. We find misdirected amplexus to be significantly higher among more closely related heterospecific pairs than between random pairs, but still occurred between species of different families. Misdirected amplexus was also significantly more common in arboreal and terrestrial anurans, and among species pairs with similar body sizes or with similar microhabitat use. We also show that misdirected amplexus is significantly more common among explosive breeders compared with prolonged breeders and is more prevalent in temperate regions compared with the tropics. Overall, we show that misdirected amplexus among anuran amphibians is not a rare phenomenon and that its prevalence is influenced by evolutionary relatedness, microhabitat use, ecological similarity, and breeding phenology. These interactions have the potential to cause species decline, hence understanding them is crucial.