Fighters and friends: female dominance hierarchy and male territoriality in a multicoloured poisonous frog.

Dendrobatid frogs are famous for their amazing body design colours and poisonous skin. The male perspective is the focus of most studies, with males known as caregivers, persistent singers, and assiduous flirts. Little is known about what females do other than reproduce or very rarely be territorial and care for their tadpoles. Two interesting questions that remain to be answered are whether dendrobatid frogs can organize themselves into a complex social system and what males and females do outside of reproductive periods. We studied the multicolour species Adelphobates galactonotus in a delimited natural environment, with 11 females and 6 males with three different body colours. Over 27 months, the individuals interacted and conducted their life histories together since their metamorphosis. Continuous daily samplings revealed that females and males are organized in a female dominance hierarchy based on aggression, with resource defence: the territory. The social repertoire involved touching, visual and sound communication, fights and grouping of individuals associated with dominant females and territorial males. Herein, we describe the social repertoire, and we tested the behavioural trait that most influences successful reproduction: fighting a lot or being a popular individual in groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]