Relación de los Rasgos Funcionales en la Preferencia de Hábitat de Boana Punctata (Anura: Hylidae) en la Vereda Miravalles, Meta

Abstract

The spotted frog Boana punctata is a species with a wide distribution in the tropical and temperate regions of South America, the knowledge of the populations in Colombia regarding aspects of their biology and functional ecology are scarce. The objective of this research is to analyze the relationship of functional features in habitat preference, identifying and analyzing the changes and correlations of 9 morphological variables and 6 environmental-structural variables of the microhabitat, together with the relative importance index in a population present in the Miravalles sidewalk, in the Department of Meta.A total of 161 adult individuals were recorded during the months of November and December 2018 and January 2019 in two sampling points, the population presented correlations in the morphological features tibia-fibula and forearm probably revealing the relationship to their displacement in the microhabitat and preference with positive and negative correlations in the environmental variables of fog, humidity and maximum temperature. Our study shows that the population of Boana punctata in miravalles preferred the Herbazal dense floodable non- wooded cover because of more stable positive and negative correlations between the 6 environmental-structural variables of the microhabitat and presented a variability in their diet, considering this species as a selective generalist predator for the orders Araneae (mainly Salticidae), Hemiptera and Orthoptera, and may occasionally take advantage of other types of prey (Blattaria, Lepidoptera, Odonata, Hymenoptera, Thysanoptera).