Andressa Bezerra

• PhD
• Researcher at Instituto Vital Brazil

Aplastodiscus musicus is a rare species and the only member of its genus that has not been included in previous phylogenetic studies. This species is known only from its type locality at Serra dos´Orgãosdos´ dos´Orgãos National Park in southeastern Brazil, and has not been seen in over 21 yr. Here, we report the re-encounter of an individual of A....

Acoustic signals have been presumed to show high evolutionary divergence levels, with similar constraints and selective pressures often leading to convergence among distant lineages. However, few studies have applied a rigorous phylogenetic approach to investigate historical changes in anuran vo-calizations. Here, we investigated which factors may...

The anuran advertisement call has been widely used in taxonomic and evolutionary studies due to its essential role in species-specific recognition. For a long time, it has been presumed that P. venusta did not emit mating calls. Here, we observed the entire vocal activity period of P. venusta over the night and recorded male calls and a female dist...

The correlation of ecological and behavioural characteristics with morphological features of brain structures has been recurrently corroborated for different vertebrate taxa, such as mammals, birds, and fishes. Here, we asked whether such correlations can also be detected in amphibians, an animal group of great interest due to its great behavioural...

Male frogs emit stereotypical advertisement calls to attract mates and deter conspecific rivals. The evolution of these calls is thought to be linked to anatomical constraints and the acoustic characteristics of their surroundings. The Acoustic Adaptation Hypothesis (AAH) posits that species evolve calls that maximize propagation distance and reduc...

Environmental education may occur in different contexts in the learning process, including informal approaches, such as movies. Recent studies have shown that movies are a central part of the Western cultural system and can influence behavior related to different subjects. In the current study, we analyzed how snakes, animals stigmatized by society...

The brain is one of the most important organs of vertebrates. Over the years, several studies have investigated brain features under different approaches, such as comparative morphology. Although many recent studies use non-invasive methods, such as micro-CT scan, some methods require access to the brain, such as histological analyses and cell coun...

Despite the importance of osteological characters in the diagnoses of the hemiphractid genera Fritziana and Flectonotus mentioned in the literature, published information on the osteology of both genera has been limited to the shape description of a few skull bones, such as nasals, quadratojugals, and neopalatines. Herein, detailed cranial osteolog...

Aspects of the diet, reproduction, and interactions with other taxa are reported for the egg-brooding tree frog, Fritziana goeldii, an endemic phytotelma-dwelling species from southeastern Brazil. A total of 56 frogs (48 males; 8 females) was collected between December 2018 and November 2019. A total of 218 dietary items, representing at least 28 t...

We studied the amphibian community of the Parque Nacional da Serra dos Órgãos (PARNASO) for over thirty years. The area of 20,024 hectares has a steep altitudinal gradient (200-2,263 m a.s.l.), and it is located in the municipalities of Guapimirim, Magé, Petrópolis and Teresópolis, middle of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Most data were obtai...

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Anuros são animais vertebrados, que pertencem ao grupo dos Anfíbios! São conhecidos popularmente como Sapos, Pererecas e Rãs. Eles são bem comuns em áreas de floresta, e seu canto pode ser ouvido principalmente à noite, em áreas onde há presença de água! São animais bem sensíveis a mudanças ambientais devido a necessitarem de água doce e limpa, e d...

The marsupial frog Fritziana goeldii is an endemic species of Brazil with few aspects of its habits reported in the literature. In this work, we report for the first time the ingestion of Elpidium sp., an ostracod that lives in bromeliads which is known to use amphibians as vectors for phoresy, by F. goeldii. It is also the first time that this gro...

Forecasts indicate an increase in the number of endangered species and a high risk of extinction for the near future, mainly for endemic species on impacted regions, as the amphibians of the genus Euparkerella. Recently, populations of Euparkerella found in poorly sampled forest fragments have been presenting evidence that they might represent new...

Forecasts indicate an increase in the number of endangered species and a high risk of extinction for the near future, mainly for endemic species on impacted regions, as the amphibians of the genus Euparkerella. Recently, populations of Euparkerella found in poorly sampled forest fragments have been presenting evidence that they might represent new...

Previsões para um futuro próximo indicam aumento no número de espécies ameaçadas e alto risco de extinção, principalmente para espécies endêmicas de regiões impactadas, como os anfíbios do gênero Euparkerella. Recentemente, populações de Euparkerella encontradas em fragmentos florestais pouco amostrados têm apresentado evidências de que podem repre...

Cerambycidae is one of the largest families of beetles, containing about 38,000 described species (Tavakilian & Chevillotte 2018). In most species of this family, adults possess a stridulatory device that allows them to produce squeaking sounds (Wang 2017). In the subfamilies Prioninae and Parandrinae, individuals stridulate by rubbing their ridged...

There is a lack of knowledge regarding the diversity of anurans in high-elevation areas of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. In order to improve the knowledge about the diversity of this group in this environment, we present a list of anurans recorded in areas above 1,200 m at Parque Nacional da Serra dos Órgãos, in southeastern Brazil. Twenty-eight s...

The amphibian fauna of Brazil is one of the richest in the world, however, there is a lack of information on its diversity and distribution. More studies are necessary to increase our understanding of amphibian ecology, microhabitat choice and use, and distribution of species along an area, thereby facilitating actions for its management and conser...