Floating frogs sound larger: environmental constraints on signal production drives call frequency changes
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SHORT COMMUNICATION
Floating frogs sound larger: environmental constraints on signal production drives call frequency changes Sandra Goutte 1
&
Matías I. Muñoz 2 & Michael J. Ryan 3,4 & Wouter Halfwerk 2
Received: 27 April 2020 / Revised: 26 August 2020 / Accepted: 4 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In animal communication, receivers benefit from signals providing reliable information on signalers’ traits of interest. Individuals involved in conflicts, such as competition between rivals, should pay particular attention to cues that are “unfakeable” by the senders due to the intrinsic properties of the production process. In bioacoustics, the best-known example of such “index signals” is the relationship between a sender’s body size and the dominant frequency of their vocalizations. Dominant frequency may, however, not only depend on an animal’s morphology but also on the interaction between the sound production system and its immediate environment. Here, we experimentally altered the environment surrounding calling frogs and assessed its impact on the signal produced. Our results show that frogs that are floating are able to inflate their vocal sacs fully and that this change in inflation level is correlated with a decrease of call dominant frequency. Keywords Acoustics . Sexual signaling . Honest communication . Sound production . Morphological constraints
Introduction Animal communication signals that are “unfakeable” due to morphological or physiological constraints imposed on their production process (also known as “index signals” (Fitch and Hauser 2003; Smith and Harper 2004; Searcy and Nowicki 2010) ensure reliable (“honest”) communication. Characteristics of these signals thus provide reliable
Communicated by: Matthias Waltert & Paula Roig Boixeda Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-020-01697-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Wouter Halfwerk [email protected] 1
New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat island campus, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
2
Department of Ecological Science, VU University, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands
3
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA
4
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Panama
information on the signaler’s particular morphological or physiological traits (Garcia et al. 2017). The most widely used example of “honest” communication is the negative frequency-body size relationship that is often reported in bioacoustics (Fitch and Hauser 2003; Dunn et al. 2015; Garcia et al. 2017). Vocalization frequency is largely influenced by the size of the sound-producing organs, even in species able to modulate the frequency of their vocalizations, and individuals that differ in size tend to call or sing at different frequencies, providing receivers with a reliable cue about the size of their mate or opponent (Ryan and Brenowitz 1985; Gerhardt and Hub
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