ACOUSTIC COMMUNICATION IN THE TEMPERATE TREEFROGS PSEUDACRIS CRUCIFER AND ACRIS CREPITANS

Abstract

Spring peepers and cricket frogs produce advertisement calls to attract females. As ectotherms their body temperatures are greatly affected by ambient air temperature. Some characteristics of their advertisement calls are correlated with temperature. I analyzed advertisement calls of both species recorded in western-central Indiana. I compared call characteristic correlations with temperature found in our populations to those in populations in other geographic areas and found similar trends throughout the range of both species. Secondly, I examined aggressive calls in the spring peepers. Aggressive calls are used in male-male interactions, and in the spring peeper are a distinct call type different from advertisement calls in two characteristics. I used a habituation-discrimination protocol to test which of the two call characteristics, that differ between advertisement and aggressive calls, males use to distinguish advertisement and aggressive calls. I found that males responded with intermediate aggression to calls that only differ from advertisement in one of the two characteristics and responded with the most aggression to calls that differed from advertisement calls in both characteristics.