Community of anurans associated to bromeliads phytotelma from a Rainforest fragment

Anurans can occur in bromeliads with the intention of protection and/or feeding (known as bromelicolous), or breeding (bromeligenous). Environmental factors can affect anurans occurrence, such as moisture, temperature and rainfall. Thus, two questions guided this abstract: a) which anuran species use the bromeliads Aechmea leptantha and Hohenbergia ramageana species? b) Which way environmental factors affect the anurans community structure in such bromeliads? The work was carried out on a semi deciduous protected fragment of rainforest called Alto da Buchada, Pernambuco state, northeastern Brazil. We sampled air moisture, temperature and rainfall at three surveys nights on all the six-bimestral surveys. We analysed relative abundance and occurrence frequency and run multiple regression among the anuran abundance and the environmental covariates. We recorded seven anurans, so far, using the bromeliads: Rhinella granulosa, R. jimi (Bufonidae, lowest abundance and relative frequency with 1.1 and 5.5% respectively), Pristimantis ramagii (Craugastoridae), Dendropsophus decipiens (greatest abundance and relative frequency with 50.5 and 66.6% respectively), Scinax auratus, S. pachycrus and S. x-signatus (Hylidae). Together, the covariates influenced the anurans P. ramagii (R2 0.56, p 0.007), D. decipiens (R2 0.42, p 0.04), S. auratus (R2 0.43, p 0.04) and S. pachycrus (R2 0.44, p 0.03). The air moisture, by itself, influenced P. ramagii, Scinax auratus, S. pachycrus and S. x-signatus. Just S. pachycrus had correlation with rainfall. We suggest anurans have strong association with bromeliads within the region.