During mating season, males call from below leaves to attract females to a suitable egg-laying spot on the forest floor. Groups of two-to-three females will form a small chorus around a single male, calling spontaneously until a single female lays a clutch of eggs to be fertilized by the male.
As a 2021 National Geographic Explorer, Goyes Vallejos will be heading to the Ulu Temburong forest in Borneo to record the unusual mating calls of females as well as describe the entire courtship and mating behavior of this elusive forest dweller.
Goyes Vallejos has been studying and documenting the ecology, natural history, and evolution of L. palavanensis for nearly a decade, first as a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut and then as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Kansas. She is currently a Preparing Future Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri, where she is continuing her studies on the behavioral and ecological factors that drive the evolution of parental care patterns in this species specifically and amphibians in general.
The Preparing Future Faculty Postdoctoral Program is designed to promote and develop scholars for tenure-track faculty positions at the University of Missouri or elsewhere, in any discipline.