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.