Rana arborícola del Socopó (Dendropsophus amicorum)

Mohamed bin Zayed Species project number 13057540

Worldwide, amphibian population declining have been documented since 1970, with an important increasing in the number of reports during 80 and 90 decades. Particularly in remote, montane regions of the tropics, where the species richness is high and the endemism concentrates, the declining rates rapidly increase for species with relatively high degree of ecologically specialization, commonly found in upland Neotropical riparian habitats.

 

Venezuela is the sixth country in the world with most amphibian biodiversity (333 known species), with a high proportion of endemism. In this project we want to enhance the conservation of one threatened endemic amphibian species in Venezuela: Dendropsophus amicorum (Hylidae), by improving occurrence probability estimates, and evaluating their habitat conditions. D. amicorum is known from a single specimen taken at Cerro Socopó, at north-west of the country between Falcon, Lara and Zulia states. This is a small and isolated mountain belonging to the Serranía de Siruma, with a maximum elevation of 1571m. Cerro Socopó represents a relict of cloud forest surrounded by semi-arid vegetation and grassland.

 

We are going to implement a visual encounter surveys and manual-calling surveys to characterize vocalizations of D. amicorum based on acoustic parameters. Then we are going to implement automated recording surveys and detect presence and absence using call recognition and detectors routines. Finally, we will model detection probability and site occupancy taking into account environmental and anthropic factors affecting species detectability. We expect improve species occurrence estimates, and be able to differentiate between real absences from non-detection, which have important implications for our correct understanding of the potential occurrence contractions.