Individual variation in the advertisement calls of a Neotropical treefrog (Scinax constrictus)

Abstract

A bstract. Studies of the variability of signals at different levels are important to resolve issues related to the evolution of a species' recognition system. We analysed the variation within males, among individuals, and among three breeding seasons in the advertisement calls of Scinax constrictus, a Neotropical hylid frog endemic to the Cerrado of Brazil. We assessed the influence of different temperature ranges and different body condition ranges over a three-year period of breeding season on the acoustical features of the advertisement calls of 62 individuals. Air temperature had negative relationship with call duration and note number. Body condition had a negative relationship with the dominant frequency and positive effects on pulse number and note duration. The acoustic parameters of S. constrictus were stable across breeding seasons. Temporal parameters were highly variable within individuals, whereas the dominant frequency was the most stereotyped property of advertisement calls. Individuals of S. constrictus have sufficient among-male variability, especially for temporal parameters (call duration, number of notes, and note duration), to permit discrimination between conspecific calling males at a reproductive site by statistical analysis. The results highlight the informativeness of non-invasive bioacoustic features for population-level studies and biological conservation.

Temporal and spectral variation in advertisement call of males Microhyla achatina (Tschudi, 1838) are sufficient for individual discrimination

“…Similar results could be found elsewhere [2,5,8,19,20]. In M. achatina, properties that contribute most to individual discrimination are pulse duration, dominant frequency and call duration.…”

“…Previous studies of frogs' call have shown that some acoustic properties demonstrate a high level among-individual variation and these properties could potentially be used as individual identity [2,5,8]. Among all of the properties, temporal properties are components that contribute mostly to individual distinctiveness.…”

Acoustic divergence in advertisement calls among three sympatricMicrohylaspecies from East China

“…Full-size  DOI: 10.7717/peerj.8708/ fig-1 was higher than CV W (Morais et al, 2012;Gambale, Signorelli & Bastos, 2014;Turin, Nali & Prado, 2018). Calls were pooled by individual specimens.…”

“…Advertisement calls are a form of male anuran vocalization that is most commonly heard and of the highest value in taxonomy and they play a crucial role in attracting potential mates and conveying territorial information to conspecifics. Several researchers have focused on advertisement calls of anurans (Wells, 2007;Gambale, Signorelli & Bastos, 2014;Köhler et al, 2017;Poyarkov et al, 2019;Wei et al, 2019). The variation in advertisement calls in anurans is generally studied at the intraspecific and interspecific levels (Köhler et al, 2017).…”

“…When a parameter has a relatively low variation, it is hypothesized to be caused by stabilizing selection of female preferences (Gerhardt, 1991;Castellano & Rosso, 2006). However, the static and dynamic traits of call parameters are not strictly inalterable, that is, these traits of a specific call parameter may vary among anuran species (e.g., dominant frequency (DF), Gambale, Signorelli & Bastos, 2014;Wei et al, 2019).…”