ANALYSIS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF FEMALE RECIPROCAL CALL IN FROGS

Citation
D. Roy et al., ANALYSIS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF FEMALE RECIPROCAL CALL IN FROGS, Current Science, 69(3), 1995, pp. 265-270
Citations number
42
Categorie Soggetti
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Journal title
ISSN journal
00113891
Volume
69
Issue
3
Year of publication
1995
Pages
265 - 270
Database
ISI
SICI code
0011-3891(1995)69:3<265:AASOFR>2.0.ZU;2-6
Abstract
Female vocalization in frogs, feeble as it is, has often escaped the a ttention of researchers, Most of the work has focused on male vocaliza tion and female phonotaxis experiments. The present study has for the first time compared in detail the temporal and spectral properties of the male advertisement and conspecific female reciprocal calls and foc used on the role of female vocalization in the breeding biology of. am phibians. While studying anuran acoustic communication in the frogs of northeast India, female reciprocal calls given in response to the mal e advertisement call were recorded from Rana erythraea. Rana limnochar is and Rana cyanophlyctis. Once the female responds to the advertising males, more activity is observed in the breeding colony, involving mo stly jumping around and across the responding female, The advertisemen t calls made by the male after the reciprocal call of the female have a higher intensity. Comparative Fourier analysis of the female recipro cal call and the conspecific male advertisement call showed that the f requency domain of the male call is almost double that of the female c all and accordingly there is a shift in the dominant frequency, wherea s the spectral pattern consisting of a single or bimodal frequency dis tribution is common to both.