Chemical Communication in Anurans: From Behaviour to Pheromone Decoding and Evolution

Chemical communication is the evolutionary oldest communication system in the animal kingdom. In amphibians, chemical signaling is well documented in caudates, but because anurans spend a lot of energy in acoustic signaling, chemical communication has received much less attention in this order.

However, poison frogs for example use chemical communication during parental care behaviours: They transport their tadpoles to very small water bodies and chemically recognize and avoid cannibalistic tadpoles. In other frog families we investigate proteinacous courtship-pheromones, which have a common evolutionary origin with salamander pheromones - being the oldest known pheromone system in terrestrial vertebrates.