Bioacoustics of Aglyptodactylus inguinalis

Variation. For variation in morphological measurements see Table 3. There is a considerable amount of variation in colour pattern among specimens collected throughout the huge supposed range of this species. This mainly refers to the extent and distribution of dark markings, flecks and spots on flanks and blotches and stripes in the canthal and tympanal regions of the head. These vary from being very few, faint and indistinct to numerous and/or dark and sharply outlined. However, in life, brown dorsal markings seem to be rather indistinct in most specimens. In some specimens, the iris is golden with some dark brown reticulation in both, upper and lower iris area ( Fig. 11 a), whereas in other specimens the lower iris area can be distinctly darker ( Fig. 11 c). Given the genetic differentiation within A. inguinalis and the small number of voucher specimens examined, more morphological variation than currently documented can be expected. Call. The call of A. inguinalis , recorded at Tolagnaro, differs remarkably from calls of other Aglyptodactylus species in being composed of short and longer notes combined in a somewhat irregular pattern. A typical call is shown in Figure 12 , showing the following alternation of notes: short, long, short, long, short, short, long, short, short, long, short, short, short, long, short, short, short, short. This note pattern is similar but not identical in all calls and may also vary slightly among calls of the same individual. All calls show overall amplitude modulation with almost constantly increasing call energy from the beginning to the end of the call. Both short and long notes are pulsed, with distinctly higher pulse rate in short notes. Number of pulses per note is very similar in short and long notes, and note duration seems to result from modulation of the pulse repetition rate. In some calls, pulses within short notes are indistinct or partly fused. For numerical call parameters refer to Table 2. The release call of Aglyptodactylus madagascariensis from Betampona provided by Rosa et al. (2011) probably corresponds to A. inguinalis , given the sequence data provided by Rosa et al. (2012) and included herein. Natural history. To our knowledge, there are no available data particularly referring to populations assigned to this species.