Bioacoustics of Pelodryas mira

Habitat and ecology Collecting localities are in both disturbed and undisturbed lowland swamp forest or swampy rainforest ( Fig. 2 a , b ). The species was typically observed perched on branches within 3 m of the ground. The advertisement call is a deep, rasping bark repeated in long series, ‘crawk, crawk, crawk ...’ ( Fig. 9 ), that is indistinguishable to the ear from that of L. caerulea . Five call series from SAMA R71658 recorded at an air temperature of 25 OC contain 33 – 48 calls (=notes) (mean = 40.4, s.d. = 6.58) produced ata rate of 2.6 – 2.8 calls s – 1 (mean = 2.66, s.d. = 0.08) lasting a total of 13 – 17.8 s (mean = 14.96, s.d. = 2.51). The first call of each series is the softest and shortest, and amplitude of calls subsequently increases during each series ( Fig. 9 a ) except for the last call, which may have a distinctly lower amplitude than the calls preceding it. Calls last 0.10 – 0.17 s , and contain 18 – 23 pulses produced at a rate of ~150 pulses s – 1 . Other Litoria collected in sympatry with L. mira at sites in southern New Guinea included the widespread lowland species L. auae , L. chloristona , L. congenita , L. infrafrenata , L. pygmaea and L. thesaurensis and in northern New Guinea included L. chrisdahli , L. infrafrenata , L. mucro , L. pygmaea and L. thesaurensis .