Variable response of anuran calling activity to daily precipitation and temperature: implications for climate change

Long-term monitoring of frog populations is needed to understand the effects of global change. To better understand the relationships between climate variation and calling activity, we monitored an anuran assemblage in a Puerto Rican wetland by sampling the acoustic environment for one minute every 10 minutes, for 41 months. By automating data collection using passive acoustic monitoring hardware, we collected more than 110,000 recordings. These recordings were analyzed using species-specific identification algorithms of four Eleutherodactylus species. The peak calling activity of E. coqui (>0.3 detection frequency) and E. cochranae (>0.2) occurred between April and September, and there was a clear decline in activity during the dry months of January–March. There was no clear annual pattern in E. brittoni or E. juanariveroi, but E. juanariveroi did show a significant decline in calling activity over the 41-month study (∼0.5 to ∼0.35). Calling activity of E. coqui and E. cochranae was positively correlated...

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