Does testosterone correlate with the aposematic syndrome in Amazonian poison frogs?

Abstract

Aposematic syndrome describes a complex phenotypic integration, which involves an antipredator strategy (aposematism) and concomitant variation in phenotypic, behavioural and physiological traits like body size, diet specialization and metabolic rate. However, a functional base must connect the behavioural and phenotypic traits related with the aposematic syndrome with the genes of each individual. Here we propose that testosterone could be this functional connection, keeping in mind that it is the product of environmental and genes interaction, and it targets over cells and tissues of structures related with phenotypic and behavioural traits related to aposematic syndrome. In this study we aimed to test the correlation between phenotypic traits related with aposematic syndrome and testosterone concentration in four syntopic species of Amazonian dendrobatids