Evolution of advertisement call in Terraranae (Anura)

Communication plays an important role in the evolution of animal social behavior. In particular, acoustic communication is commonly used to attract reproductive partners, and, because of that, animal calls are often a prezygotic barrier mechanism. The aim of this work is assess the influence of body size on the calls of of direct-developing anurans (Anura: Terraranae), as well as their main evolutionary patterns in the clade. We used literature searches to obtain information on spectral characteristics (minimum, maximum, and dominant frequencies) and body size of 139 species. We found statistically significant evidence for phylogenetic signal in all acoustic parameters, as well as body size. Interestingly, minimum frequency tended to evolve faster than dominant and maximum frequencies. In addition, we confirmed the negative relationship between body size and dominant frequency that has been suggested in the literature in more taxonomically limited studies. This study confirms the importance of phylogenetic comparative methods to elucidate the evolution of advertisement calls in anurans.