Anyone who spends time near a swamp can easily hear that frogs use their voices to chitchat, however it wasn⤙t until about 2 decades ago that researchers announced these animals also talk to water-transported protein pheromones.
Now new research shows frogs banter with airborne chemicals too.
⤽It⤙s the very first proof that frogs use volatile pheromones⤠to speak, says Schultz, a chemical ecologist in the Technical University of Braunschweig, in Germany. In reality, it⤙s the first proof that any amphibians communicate using chemicals in the air, he adds (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., DOI)
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⤽So few pheromones are already chemically identified in vertebrates, thus, making this really exciting news,⤠an amphibian biologist at Duquesne University. She highlights that biologists had done behavioral studies suggesting frogs used airborne pheromones, but none of them ended up identified until recently.
Within the new study, Schulz collaborated with TU Braunschweig zoologist Miguel Vences and Harvard University⤙s Katharina Wollenberg, who went to Madagascar to study a local group of frogs called Mantellidae.
Male Mantellidae frogs have bulbous organs on their inner thighs called femoral glands, and it⤙s from these sacs the team isolated two molecules that waft from the air as pheromones, namely 8-methyl-2-nonanol and a macrolide called phoracantholide J.
The team learned that Mantellidae frogs will hop toward a mixture of both of these molecules and that different species have different ratios of these in their femoral glands. What specifically these frogs assert using the molecules is up in mid-air, but Schulz has some speculations.
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⤽Frogs exist in high species diversity in these swampy areas-there are about 100 species,⤠Schulz says. Even though different species croak uniquely, the frog density is indeed high that ⤽it can be difficult to locate a mate of the correct species.⤠Perhaps the odors assist with species recognition, he suggests.
The newest research also confirms the results of frog genome sequencing, Woodley says. Frog DNA has a variety of genes for volatile chemical receptors, but nobody knew if they were functional genes or simply an artifact of evolution. ⤽It turns out they might be functional,⤠she adds.
Schulz⤙s team isolated a number of other alcohols and macrolides in the frogs⤙ femoral glands, including a new natural product called gephyromantolide A. The team also devised a brand new synthetic route for building the ringed molecules that utilizes a reaction called Corey-Nicolaou macrolactonization. The road, the shortest such path ever reported, provided enough sample to check which with the additional molecules are pheromones.
