Angela M Mendoza-Henao

• Biologist Ph.D.
• Investigadora Adjunto at Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute

Colombia is the country with the largest number of bird species worldwide, yet its avifauna is seriously threatened by habitat degradation and poaching. We built a DNA barcode library of nearly half of the bird species listed in the CITES appendices for Colombia, thereby constructing a species identification reference that will help in global effor...

The complex geological history of Central America has been useful for understanding the processes influencing the distribution and diversity of multiple groups of organisms. Anurans are an excellent choice for such studies because they typically exhibit site fidelity and reduced movement. The objective of this work was to identify the impact of rec...

Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni is one of the widest ranging glassfrog species, occurring in the lowlands from Mexico through Central America to Ecuador. Despite its conservative morphology, previous studies suggested that the species is comprised of multiple lineages. Here we test the hypothesis of cryptic species within H. fleischmanni by means of...

The Acoustic Adaptation Hypothesis (AAH) and Ecological Character Displacement (ECD) are two potential mechanisms shaping call evolution that can predict opposite trends for the differentiation of signals. Under AAH, signals evolve to minimize environmental degradation and maximize detection against background noise, predicting call homogenization...

Understanding animal behavior is crucial for effective mammal conservation efforts; however, limited knowledge exists regarding the behavioral patterns of many species, particularly in wild conditions. The Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus) is the only ursid distributed in South America and is categorized as vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN. The...

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...

Here I report the predation of the milky treefrog Trachycephalus "vermiculatus" by Leptophis ahaetulla and I provide quantitative data on the distress call emitted by the milky treefrog. I also compare some Leptophis species' prey information based on previous records.

Este protocolo describe las etapas y recomendaciones para el muestreo, procesamiento y etiquetado manual de grabaciones pasivas, basado en la trayectoria y el proceso experimental del equipo de la Colección de Sonidos Ambientales Mauricio Álvarez Rebolledo del Instituto Humboldt. Con los métodos que presentamos en este documento buscamos sugerir un...

Neotropical ecosystems are renowned for numerous examples of adaptive radiation in both plants and animals resulting in high levels of biodiversity and endemism. However, we still lack a comprehensive review of the abiotic and biotic factors that contribute to these adaptive radiations. To fill this gap, we delve into the geological history of the...

Digital bioacoustic collections preserve important behavioural and ecological traits, as well as trackable evidence of the presence of species in space and time. Well-structured and open-source repositories provide valuable information for science and biodiversity conservation. Here, we introduce the Environmental Sound Collection-'Mauricio Álvarez...

A pesar de la gran riqueza en las ranas Pristimantis, su repertorio acústico permanece pobremente conocido, y particularmente, sus señales acústicas defensivas tales como los llamados de auxilio no han sido documentados. Aquí, proveemos datos cuantitativos de la llamada de auxilio emitida por una hembra de Pristimantis racemus y extendemos la distr...

In recent decades, the development of new sampling techniques has allowed us to more easily collect novel samples that enrich our knowledge of the specimens we study. In this sense, audiovisual samples, especially acoustic signal recordings, have become an essential part of herpetological research. The correct storage of these specimens is key to s...

Editor: Antonieta Labra-Lillo, Chile Resumen.-Las serpientes del género Leptodeira son depredadoras de anuros. Aquí reporto un evento de depredación de la rana arborícola mexicana Smilisca baudinii por L. polysticta y proporciono información cuantitativa de la llamada de estrés emitida por la rana. Además, comparo este evento con la información de...

Conservation initiatives are particularly important in light of the high proportion of species threatened with extinction worldwide. Advertisement calls are a valuable resource for conservation given their importance for studies on amphibian taxonomy, systematics, evolutionary biology, ecology, and monitoring strategies. However, advertisement call...

Las colecciones biológicas son la biblioteca de la biodiversidad y mediante la identificación de los vacíos de representación apoyan la planificación, el manejo, la consolidación de inventarios y la construcción de estrategias para su conservación. https://reporte.humboldt.org.co/biodiversidad/2020/cap1/104/

TThe tropical montane cloud forests of the Andes harbor an exceptional species diversity and endemism, which is currently under threat from rapid environmental change. Understanding the patterns and processes behind this diversity is a major challenge. In this chapter, we provide a conceptual synthesis of the driving factors behind the processes th...

Frogs of the genus Eleutherodactylus are direct developing frogs grouped into five subgenera and 192 species, with a geographic distribution primarily centered in the Caribbean (Padial et al. 2014). Eleutherodactylus species inhabit a variety of environments such as tropical and temperate forests, and scrub, where they occupy different microhabitat...

Species traits provide a strong link between an organism's fitness and processes at community and ecosystem levels. However, such data remain scarce for amphibians in the Neotropics. Colombia is the country with the highest number of threatened amphibians and the second greatest number of amphibian species worldwide. We present a data set containin...

Supplementary Material 1 Spatial clustering and genetic diversity for mitochondrial DNA sequences per gene from Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni.

Haplotype networks Haplotype networks of mitochondrial DNA haplotypes for 16S, COI and ND1 for H. fleischmanni. Hatch marks represent inferred mutational steps. The size of the circle is proportional to the number of individuals found for each haplotype.

Supplementary Material 2 New fasta sequences of the three mitochondrial genes obtained for Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni. Sequence names coincides with the information in Table S1.

Phylogenetic relationships inferred from maximum-likelihood analyses Phylogenetic relationships inferred from maximum-likelihood analyses (RAxML) of 3 genes sequenced from Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni and sister species, with maximum-likelihood bootstrap support values >60 shown to the right of each node. For details see ‘Materials an Methods’ Se...

Phylogenetic relationships inferred from Bayesian analysis Phylogenetic relationships inferred from Bayesian analysis (Mr. Bayes) of 3 genes sequenced from Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni and sister species, with maximum-likelihood bootstrap support values >0.50 shown to the right of each node. For details see Materials an Methods Section.

Specimens and DNA sequences used in this research Specimens and DNA sequences used in this research. Museum voucher, GenBank accession numbers and data sources are specified. GenBank numbers in bold correspond to numbers taken from previously published sources. Museum abbreviations are CD (Colección de Vertebrados de Docencia de la Universidad del...

Numerous direct developing species of the genus Eleutherodactylus native to the Caribbean Islands have been introduced outside its natural range by human activities. The greenhouse frog, Eleutherodactylus planirostris is native to Cuba and the Bahamas and has been introduced to many parts of the world. Here, we report the rediscovery of E. planiros...

Plectrohyla avia is a poorly known Critically Endangered species from Southern Mexico and Guatemala.Herein we describe its aquatic reproductive behavior, including underwater calling and odd adaptations for aquatic life. This is the first Hylid species (aside Pseudinae) to be adapted for aquatic breeding.

Collections of frozen tissue samples stand as keystone sources of molecular information to construct biodiversity knowledge, and are particularly challenged if they focus on megadiverse countries. In 1998 the Humboldt Institute (Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt) began a tissue collection of Colombian biodiver...

ABSTRACT Collections of frozen tissue samples stand as keystone sources of molecular information to construct biodiversity knowledge, and are particularly challenged if they focus on megadiverse countries. In 1998 the Humboldt Institute (Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt) began a tissue collection of Colombian...

Collections of frozen tissue samples stand as keystone sources of molecular information to construct biodiversity knowledge, and are particularly challenged if they focus on megadiverse countries. In 1998 the Humboldt Institute (Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt) began a tissue collection of Colombian biodiver...

We report patterns of infection of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) in a cloud forest amphibian community in the Andean Western Cordillera of Ecuador (Reserva Las Gralarias). Data were obtained during the rainy seasons of two consecutive years, using qPCR (year 2012) and end-­ point PCR (year 2013). We show that average Bd prevalence in this amp...

The identification of priority areas and species for conservation is an urgent endeavor in view of environmental changes threatening biological diversity. New macroecological tools that take advantage of the rapid accumulation of distribution and phylogenetic data have been developed recently to tackle that challenge. Here we use the novel concept...

The genus Pristimantis contains many species and species groups that are difficult to differentiate. These frogs show high intraspecific morphological variability and low morphological divergence between species, which contributes to misclassification of taxa and systematic uncertainties. Morphometric assessments coupled with the use of molecular m...

Se analizaron las frecuencias máximas y distancia entre notas para 160 cantos de la especie Pitangus sulphuratus, dentro y entre zonas urbanas y suburbanas del municipio de Cali (Colombia), a partir de grabaciones y análisis de los espectrogramas resultantes. Las diferencias entre individuos fueron determinadas principalmente por la variación en la...

The Andes of South America hosts perhaps the highest amphibian species diversity in the world, and a sizable component of that diversity is comprised of direct-developing frogs of the genus Pristimantis (Anura: Craugastoridae). In order to better understand the initial stages of species formation in these frogs, this study quantified local-scale sp...

Posterior probability distributions for effective population sizes from IMa analysis. (TIF)

Posterior probability distributions for gene flow from IMa analysis. (TIF)

Posterior probability distributions for divergence times from IMa analysis. (TIF)

Sample information for taxa analyzed in this study. (DOC)

We evaluated the performance of amphibian epithelial mucosa as a non-destructive method for sampling DNA in four extraction protocols. We took tissue from 68 individuals of Eleutherodactylus johnstonei (Anura: Eleutherodactylidae) through a surface smear of each specimen with a sterile swab. DNA was extracted using the DNeasy extraction kit (Qiagen...

It has been widely reported that microorganisms present in soil or in water have a strong impact on the viability of amphibians' natural populations. However, in rural areas with livestock activities, the natural composition of the soil microorganism community can be highly altered by cattle mobility to the point that cattle hooves can be an effect...

Se postula que especies simpátricas pueden coexistir si hay partición de recursos por los cuales podrían competir. Para identificar si hay segregación en el uso del espacio acústico entre los anuros de una comunidad en la Estación Biológica Chajul, Chiapas, México, se compararon las características de la frecuencia y la duración del canto de las tr...

In molecular biology studies of Anura, nondestructive methods to obtain genetic material are needed as alternatives to toe clipping. This work evaluates a nondestructive method for sampling DNA from blood puncture, comparing the performance of three different extraction protocols (Qiagen Kit, Salting-out and Chelex). We collected 134 individuals of...