Many organisms have evolved adaptations to increase the odds of survival of their offspring. Parental care has evolved several times in animals including ectotherms. In amphibians, ~ 10% of species exhibit parental care. Among these, poison frogs (Dendrobatidae) are well-known for their extensive care, which includes egg guarding, larval transport, and specialized tadpole provisioning with trophic eggs. At least one third of dendrobatids displaying aposematism by exhibiting warning coloration that informs potential predators about the presence of defensive skin toxins. Aposematism has a central role in poison frog diversification, including diet specialization, and visual and acoustic communication; and it is thought to have impacted their reproductive biology as well. We tested the latter association using multivariate phylogenetic methods at the family level. Our results show complex relationships between aposematism and certain aspects of the reproductive biology in dendrobatids. In particular, aposematic species tend to use more specialized tadpole-deposition sites, such as phytotelmata, and ferry fewer tadpoles than non-aposematic species. We propose that aposematism may have facilitated the diversification of microhabitat use in dendrobatids in the context of reproduction. Furthermore, the use of resource-limited tadpole-deposition environments may have evolved in tandem with an optimal reproductive strategy characterized by few offspring, biparental care, and female provisioning of food in the form of unfertilized eggs. We also found that in phytotelm-breeders, the rate of transition from cryptic to aposematic phenotype is 17 to 19 times higher than vice versa. Therefore, we infer that the aposematism in dendrobatids might serve as an umbrella trait for the evolution and maintenance of their complex offspring-caring activities.

许多生物已经进化出适应性以增加其后代的生存几率。父母照顾在包括变温动物在内的动物中已经进化了数次。在两栖动物中，约 10% 的物种表现出父母的照顾。其中，毒蛙 (Dendrobatidae) 以其广泛的照料而闻名，包括卵保护、幼虫运输和专门为蝌蚪提供营养卵。至少有三分之一的树突蛙通过展示警告色来表现出戒毒行为，这种警告色会告知潜在的捕食者防御性皮肤毒素的存在。戒毒在毒蛙多样化中起着核心作用，包括饮食专业化以及视觉和听觉交流；人们认为它也影响了它们的生殖生物学。我们在家庭水平上使用多变量系统发育方法测试了后一种关联。我们的结果显示了戒毒与石斛生殖生物学某些方面之间的复杂关系。特别是，无戒律物种倾向于使用更专门的蝌蚪沉积地点，例如植物触须，并且比无戒律物种运送更少的蝌蚪。我们提出，在繁殖的背景下，戒毒可能促进了石斛微生境使用的多样化。此外，资源有限的蝌蚪沉积环境的使用可能与最佳繁殖策略同步进化，其特点是后代少、双亲照料和雌性以未受精卵的形式提供食物。我们还发现，在植物育种者中，从隐性表型到无性表型的转换率比相反的转换率高 17 到 19 倍。因此，我们推断树突蛙的戒毒行为可能作为其复杂后代护理活动的进化和维持的伞状特征。