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Female Frogs Wooing Males with Songs for the First Time

Limnonectes_palavanensis

For most of the frogs and toads in the world, during breeding season, the male frog calls out to the female frogs to attract them. For some species, the female frog sometimes call back. For the first time, researchers have found a species of frog where the female calls out to attract the male frogs. Johana Goyes Vallejos, a Ph.D. candidate from UConn, and colleagues found that the female Smooth Guardian Frogs (Limnonectes palavanensis) often group around a male frog and sing to it.  The male frogs occasionally call back to let them know that they are single and ready to mingle. Besides just calling, the female frogs also abandon their eggs after breeding and let the males take care of them. The sex roles of this species of frogs are reversed from the normal roles. Some may say these frogs are progressive.

Image By Indraneil Das – Das, I. (2006). Crocker Range National Park, Sabah, as a refuge for Borneo’s montane herpetofauna. Amphibian and Reptile Conservation 4 (1): 3–11, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47210176
Paper found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-017-2323-3

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