Abstract
In recently diverged gray treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis and H. versicolor), advertisement calls that differ primarily in pulse shape and pulse rate act as an important premating isolation mechanism. Temporally selective neurons in the anuran inferior colliculus may contribute to selective behavioral responses to these calls. Here we present in vivo extracellular and whole-cell recordings from long-interval-selective neurons (LINs) made during presentation of pulses that varied in shape and rate. Whole-cell recordings revealed that interplay between excitation and inhibition shapes long-interval selectivity. LINs in H. versicolor showed greater selectivity for slow-rise pulses, consistent with the slow-rise pulse characteristics of their calls. The steepness of pulse-rate tuning functions, but not the distributions of best pulse rates, differed between the species in a manner that depended on whether pulses had slow or fast-rise shape. When tested with stimuli representing the temporal structure of the advertisement calls of H. chrysoscelis or H. versicolor, approximately 27 % of LINs in H. versicolor responded exclusively to the latter stimulus type. The LINs of H. chrysoscelis were less selective. Encounter calls, which are produced at similar pulse rates in both species (≈5 pulses/s), are likely to be effective stimuli for the LINs of both species.
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Acknowledgments
We thank H.C. Gerhardt, J. Schwartz and their colleagues for providing the animals used in this study. We also thank Stephen Odom and Caleb Herrick for assisting in experiments and data processing. This work was supported by a grant from NIDCD. Animals were prepared for recording according to previously published methods (see Alder and Rose 2000; Rose et al. 2015).
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Hanson, J.L., Rose, G.J., Leary, C.J. et al. Species specificity of temporal processing in the auditory midbrain of gray treefrogs: long-interval neurons. J Comp Physiol A 202, 67–79 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-015-1054-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-015-1054-z