The hyolaryngeal apparatus of three species of Scinax (Scinaxinae: Hylidae: Anura) and comparison with other Hylidae species
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Ecology, Evolutionary Studies, Zoology
- Keywords
- cartilage, cricoid, larynx, morphology, arytenoid
- Copyright
- © 2017 Arenas Rodríguez et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. The hyolaryngeal apparatus of three species of Scinax (Scinaxinae: Hylidae: Anura) and comparison with other Hylidae species. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3438v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3438v1
Abstract
The larynx is an important morphological structure for sound production in frogs. Recently, high levels of variation in calls and their relation to the morphology of frogs in the family Hylidae, in addition to molecular data, have resulted in significant changes in the taxonomy of this family. However, there are few studies that describe the structures and processes of the hyoid, cricoid or arytenoid in hylid frogs. We studied the hyolaryngeal anatomy of both males and females of three species of the hylid genus Scinax (S. ruber, S. wandae and S. kennedyi) using differential and enzymatic clearing and staining methods. We describe the laryngeal anatomy of these species and compare to those of other hylids. We found that S. ruber has the largest cartilage arytenoid of any species of the family Hylidae studied to date. We show the laryngeal differences between Scinax species and the interspecific variability in the shapes of the projections among the arytenoid in the males of those species. The taxonomic characters described here can play a key role in differentiating these species from other members of Scinax, contributing to the knowledge of the species examined, and helping to differentiate them from other species, and to contributing also the natural history and phylogenetic relationships within the genus.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.