Abstract
Albert Feng was a pioneer in the field of auditory neuroethology who used frogs to investigate the neural basis of spectral and temporal processing and directional hearing. Among his many contributions was connecting neural mechanisms for sound pattern recognition and localization to the problems of auditory masking that frogs encounter when communicating in noisy, real-world environments. Feng’s neurophysiological studies of auditory processing foreshadowed and inspired subsequent behavioral investigations of auditory masking in frogs. For frogs, vocal communication frequently occurs in breeding choruses, where males form dense aggregations and produce loud species-specific advertisement calls to attract potential mates and repel competitive rivals. In this review, we aim to highlight how Feng’s research advanced our understanding of how frogs cope with noise. We structure our narrative around three themes woven throughout Feng’s research—spectral, temporal, and directional processing—to illustrate how frogs can mitigate problems of auditory masking by exploiting frequency separation between signals and noise, temporal fluctuations in noise amplitude, and spatial separation between signals and noise. We conclude by proposing future research that would build on Feng’s considerable legacy to advance our understanding of hearing and sound communication in frogs and other vertebrates.
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05 December 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-022-01595-6
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Acknowledgements
We thank Peter Narins for inviting us to contribute this article in memory of Albert Feng, whose work on hearing and sound communication in frogs has inspired our careers and research programs.
Funding
Much of the original research funding on hylid treefrogs reviewed here was funded by grants to MAB from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R03DC008396 and R01DC009582) and the National Science Foundation (IOS-0842759, IOS-1452831). Preparation of this article was supported in part by grants to NL (IOS-2144831) and MAB (IOS-2022253) from the National Science Foundation.
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Lee, N., Vélez, A. & Bee, M. Behind the mask(ing): how frogs cope with noise. J Comp Physiol A 209, 47–66 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-022-01586-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-022-01586-7