Home is where the high-quality resources are: nursery characteristics and territory distribution suggest reproductive resource defense in golden rocket frogs

For externally fertilizing animals, the early stages of development are often the most precarious. In the face of multiple abiotic and biotic stressors, parents must assess and select rearing sites that maximize the probability of offspring survival. This is particularly true for Neotropical poison frogs, many of which transport tadpoles to small pools of water called phytotelmata that serve as larval-rearing sites. In these systems, pool choice can have a large effect on offspring growth and survival. Here, we studied the golden rocket frog (Anomaloglossus beebei, Aromobatidae), a territorial phytotelm-breeding frog that lives exclusively in giant tank bromeliads (Brocchinia micrantha), to examine phytotelm selection and reproductive resource defense. We first quantified the characteristics of phytotelmata and found that tadpoles were more likely to occur in pools with low levels of mucilage and in leaves at intermediate heights on the plant. We additionally found that low mucilage poo...