Automatic Recording Units.

Amphibians are the most threatened animal group in the New World (Young et al., 2004). Thus, there is an urgent need for monitoring programs to document and understand populations’ changes. In Cuba, amphibians exhibit the highest percentage of endemic species (95%) among all vertebrates and 79% are threatened. Nevertheless, a monitoring program tracking population status does not exist for any species. Vocalizations are a powerful tool for monitoring anurans amphibians, but traditional acoustic encounter surveys are limited by the number of times a habitat is sampled, and the intermittent calling patterns that greatly difficult their detection. On the other hand, automatic recorders are a more efficient method to sample for longer periods. In addition, they allow a fast, computer-mediated analysis of large data. The goal of this project is to start the first long-term acoustic monitoring program of Cuban amphibians using automatic recorders, in order to document population status and contribute to detect demographic changes over time allowing specific conservation actions in the future. We will work in Sierra del Rosario Biosphere Reserve, the protected area that exhibits the highest amphibian biodiversity in western Cuba, with 40% of the species threatened.

The information gathered will constitute a baseline reference for detecting and understanding potential populations’ changes in the future. The detailed daily and seasonal calling phenology for an amphibian species assemblage and its relationship with environmental variables will be studied. This information will increase our knowledge about the patterns of breeding activity, which will in turn contribute to optimize future visual encounter surveys and single species ecological studies. In addition, the combination of acoustic and environmental data will help to better understand the relationships between short-term variation in environmental variables and calling activity, and to predict the potential long-term consequences of climate change on amphibians breeding activity.

Along with the monitoring program, we will develop education activities at local schools and we will increase the capacitation of the staff in both the identification of amphibian species and the implementation of sensing techniques. This will raise awareness about the value of amphibians and will prepare wildlife conservation staff in this Biosphere Reserve to continue these conservation works in the future.