Abstract
In most anuran species, vocalizations often consist of different notes with various temporal and spectral acoustic attributes which play a crucial role in their survival and reproductive success. Although the first call note might be necessary for anuran communication, we know little about how different notes of the calls influence female choice. The present study used phonotaxis experiments to examine the effects of the notes on female choice in the Anhui tree frog (Rhacophorus zhoukaiyae). The stimulus pair consisted of the original male advertisement call (OC) and one of four revised versions, where the first (WN1), second (WN2), or fifth (WN5) notes were replaced by band-limited white noise (WN), and the second note was replaced by a period of silence (SN2), played back antiphonally. The results showed that (1) the females preferred OC compared with WN1, suggesting the first call note plays an important role in female choice, and (2) the females preferred WN2 and SN2 compared with OC. We discuss the possibility that the second note might be the result of the combined effects of physiological constraint and avoiding backward masking of the second note on the first one over evolutionary time. These results support the notion that the first two functionally antagonistic call notes may influence female choice in this species.
Significance statement
Vocalizations consisting of different components are a prerequisite for acoustic communication. However, the effect of different notes in anuran advertisement calls on female choice is still unknown. We adapted different notes of the original male advertisement call of the Anhui tree frog (R. zhoukaiyae) and played them back to females in order to explore the effects of these modifications on female choice. We found that females preferred male advertisement calls that contained the first note, but not the second one. These results support the idea that the first call note may play an important role in female choice, while the second note might have resulted from the combined effects of physiological constraint and avoiding backward masking of the second note on the first one.
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Data availability
The dataset generated and analyzed in the current study are available at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/w7pj5skccb/3.
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Acknowledgments
We sincerely thank Zhen Xu, Guotao Chen, Jingmei Gan, and Tingli Hu from the School of Life Science, Anhui University, for their help in fieldwork, as well as the members of Animal Behavior and Neural Mechanism Group of Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for their discussions and suggestions. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable advice and comments on the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 32170504 and 31970422) to GF, the grant from the Biodiversity Survey, Monitoring and Assessment Project of Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China (No. 2019HB2096001006) to BZ.
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Animal procedures were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Permit Number: 2016005). All applicable national and institutional guidelines for the use of animals were followed.
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Jiang, Q., Sun, R., Wang, Z. et al. The first two functionally antagonistic call notes influence female choice in the Anhui tree frog. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 78, 60 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-024-03476-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-024-03476-1