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Phonotaxis to male’s calls embedded within a chorus by female gray treefrogs, Hyla versicolor

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Abstract

During the reproductive season, male Hyla versicolor produce advertisement calls to attract females. Females exhibit phonotaxis and approach the individual callers, resulting in amplexus. For frogs that call from dense choruses, the extent to which and the range from which a male’s advertisement call within a chorus can be heard by a receptive female leading to phonotaxis is unclear. We investigated females’ responses to natural choruses in the field and found that they were attracted and showed directed orientation to breeding choruses at distances up to 100 m. To assess the role of acoustic cues in the directed orientation, we conducted acoustic playback experiments in the laboratory using conspecific call and noise as stimuli, as well as chorus sounds (that contained calls from a focal male) recorded at various distances, all played at naturalistic intensities. Using two response metrics (females’ normalized response times and their phonotaxis trajectories) we found that, unlike the field experiments, females oriented and were attracted to chorus sounds from 1 to 32 m only, but not from >32 m, or to band-limited noise. Possible reasons for the observed difference in phonotaxis behavior in the two experimental conditions were discussed.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Missouri Department of Conservation and the University of Missouri-Columbia for allowing studies and capture permits. Carl Gerhardt generously provided advice and material support. Vincent Marshall, Noah Gordon, Oliver Beckers, and Sarah Bush provided valuable advice and comments on the present study. Sarah Humfeld and Alison Welch aided in coordinating field activities and in providing material support. Eric Rozier provided many helpful comments and assistance with the statistical analysis. We would also like to thank the University of Missouri-Columbia undergraduate students who greatly aided in both animal collection and experimental execution: Paul Kimball, Stephanie Kleyman, and Leah Reynolds. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS-0422073) grant to ASF and a National Science Foundation grant (IOB-0445286) to JS. All experimental procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Illinois.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuroscience Program, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Kevin Christie & Albert S. Feng

  2. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Johannes Schul

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  1. Kevin Christie
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  2. Johannes Schul
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  3. Albert S. Feng
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Correspondence to Kevin Christie.

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Christie, K., Schul, J. & Feng, A.S. Phonotaxis to male’s calls embedded within a chorus by female gray treefrogs, Hyla versicolor . J Comp Physiol A 196, 569–579 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-010-0544-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-010-0544-2

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