Neighbour–stranger discrimination by territorial male bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana): I. Acoustic basis

doi:10.1006/anbe.2001.1851

Animal Behaviour

Volume 62, Issue 6, December 2001, Pages 1129-1140

https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.2001.1851 Get rights and content

Abstract

Some territorial animals discriminate among neighbours and strangers based on individual differences in acoustic signals. Male North American bullfrogs, Rana catesbeiana, display this form of discrimination based on individual variation in advertisement calls. In this study, we investigated the acoustic basis of neighbour–stranger discrimination to determine how individual identity might be encoded by particular properties of bullfrog advertisement calls. We analysed patterns of within-male and between-male variability in 1078 bullfrog advertisement calls recorded from 27 territorial males. All call properties that we examined varied significantly among males. However, fundamental frequency and dominant frequency showed the lowest within-male variation and the highest repeatability between two recording sessions, and both properties were highly correlated with the first canonical root from discriminant function analyses, which typically accounted for 70–80% of the variability between males. We suggest that neighbour–stranger discrimination in bullfrogs is partially mediated by between-male differences in the spectral or fine temporal properties of advertisement calls.

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Citation Excerpt :
Finally, because territorial males are unlikely to have more than five neighbours, and most have only one or two neighbours, our discriminant analysis of the full data set of 34 males overestimates the difficulty of the recognition problem faced by territorial males. Therefore, to examine the classification success of a more biologically relevant group size (Bee & Gerhardt, 2001a; Bee, Kozich, Blackwell, & Gerhardt, 2001), we also ran the same cross-validation procedure on 100 randomly selected groups of five individuals. All acoustic properties except for call interval exhibited greater variation among individuals than within individuals (CVa/CVw > 1; Appendix, Table A1).
Some territorial animals recognize familiar neighbours and are less aggressive to established neighbours than they are to strangers. This form of social recognition produces a ‘dear enemy’ effect, which may allow animals to reduce the costs of territory defence. The dear enemy effect is thought to reflect either the decreased threat posed by neighbours relative to strangers (the relative threat hypothesis) or the decreased need for escalation with increasing familiarity between neighbours (the familiarity hypothesis). We tested for a vocally mediated dear enemy effect in male brilliant-thighed poison frogs, Allobates femoralis. In this species, the familiarity hypothesis predicts a dear enemy effect, because males defend long-term stable territories and should be familiar with the calls of their neighbours. In contrast, the relative threat hypothesis does not predict a dear enemy effect, because neighbours and strangers both represent competitors for mates and likely pose equivalent threats. Acoustic analyses showed that males produce individually distinctive advertisement calls. Two playback experiments were conducted to determine whether territorial males respond less aggressively to neighbours' calls than to strangers' calls based on this acoustic identity information. In the first experiment, males pursued acoustically simulated neighbours and strangers to similar distances when calls were played both from the direction of the neighbour's territory and from a direction with no neighbours. In the second experiment, males responded aggressively to neighbours' and strangers' calls at similar threshold amplitudes and pursued these calls to similar distances. Hence, two different playback experiments failed to find evidence of a vocally mediated dear enemy effect. Our results support the hypothesis that territorial animals respond to the relative threat posed by neighbours and strangers regardless of their level of familiarity with neighbours.
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^f1: Correspondence and present address: M. Bee, Department of Biology, Carl von Ossietzky University, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany (email:[email protected]).

^f2: H. C. Gerhardt is at the Division of Biological Sciences, 105 Tucker Hall, University of Missouri–Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211-7400, U.S.A.

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Regular ArticlesNeighbour–stranger discrimination by territorial male bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana): I. Acoustic basis

Abstract

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Habituation as a mechanism of reduced aggression between neighboring territorial male bullfrogs, Rana catesbeiana

Journal of Comparative Psychology

Atmospheric and underwater propagation of bullfrog vocalizations

Bioacoustics

Individual recognition by song in white-throated sparrows. III. Song features used in individual recognition

Canadian Journal of Zoology

Perceptual organization of acoustic stimuli by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus): III Contact calls

Journal of Comparative Psychology

The Evoked Vocal Response of the Bullfrog

Acoustically mediated neighbor recognition in the North American bullfrog, Rana catesbeiana

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Individual recognition of amphibians: effects of toe clipping and fluorescent tagging on the salamander Plethodon vehiculum

Journal of Herpetology

Biology of Amphibians

Lek organization and mating strategies in the bullfrog

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Individual recognition by sounds in birds

Three populations of primary auditory fibers in the bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana): their peripheral origins and frequency selectivities

Journal of Comparative Physiology A

Regular Articles
Neighbour–stranger discrimination by territorial male bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana): I. Acoustic basis