December
18, 2018 by Brendan M. Lynch, University of Kansas
Stay-at-home
dads might find their spirit animal in the smooth guardian frog of Borneo. A
new pair of research papers authored by an investigator at the University of
Kansas shows the male of the smooth guardian frog species (Limnonectes palavanensis) is a kind of amphibian "Mr.
Mom"—an exemplar of male parental care in the animal kingdom.
"Sex-role
reversal is basically when a male takes the role that you usually see with
females in other species," said Johana Goyes Vallejos, a postdoctoral
research associate with the Herpetology Division at KU's Biodiversity
Institute, who led both studies. "The male provides care for the
offspring. The females do the displaying part—like a peacock that has beautiful
feathers—the female has those ornaments or behaviors you usually see with
males."
The
papers reflect three years' worth of fieldwork in Borneo, a vast island in the
southwestern Pacific Ocean split among the nations of Malaysia, Brunei and
Indonesia. Goyes Vallejos observed the frogs both in the wild and in outdoor
enclosures at a field station.
In one of
the papers, published in the Journal of Natural History, Goyes Vallejos
offers new details about the prolonged parental duties of the male smooth
guardian frog, behavior that had
been studied very little until now. "In frogs, male parenting is more
common," said Goyes Vallejos. "But in other frog species,
males take care of eggs and offspring, but they continue to call to attract
other females—they aren't missing opportunities to mate with females just
because they have a clutch of eggs. So, sometimes they have two or three
clutches of eggs from different females. But in the case of the smooth guardian
frog, they only take care of one clutch and they don't call at that time—they
aren't interested in attracting other females; they're very faithful fathers.
That's unusual. Clearly, other frog species can do it, so why don't they?
There's some reversal in the sex roles where the father becomes a very devoted
parent while the female can go on to mate multiple times."
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