Abstract
This study describes the vocal repertoire of the Guyanan golden rocket frog, Anomaloglossus beebei, a bromeliad specialist with biparental care. Using multivariate analyses of nine call properties, as well as the occurrence of nonlinear phenomena, three signal types were distinguished - advertisement, courtship, and aggressive calls. Although all three call types were composed of a short series of rapidly repeated pulses, advertisement calls were produced at higher amplitudes and had longer pulse durations than both courtship calls and aggressive calls. Courtship calls exhibited lower dominant frequencies than both advertisement and aggressive calls, which had similar dominant frequencies. Aggressive calls had more pulses per call, had longer intervals between calls, and occasionally contained one or two introductory pulses preceding the pulsed call. Several acoustic properties predicted aspects of the signaler's body size and condition. Our study demonstrates the reliability of human observers to differentiate the multiple call types of A. beebei based on hearing calls and observing the social context in which they are produced under field conditions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4811-4820 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of the Acoustical Society of America |
| Volume | 131 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2012 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was funded by grants from the Explorers Club Exploration Fund, the Rothman Fellowship Fund, the Dayton Wilkie Natural History Fund of the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota, Sigma Xi, and the Animal Behavior Society. The field assistance of P. Benjamin, F. Marco, Z. Ali, and A. Wubbels was greatly appreciated. Permission to conduct this study was granted by I. Ramdass of the Guyana Environmental Protection Agency and Y. Vasconcellos of the Guyana National Parks Commission. We also thank L. Gibson, C. Bernard of the University of Guyana, and N. Rahaman and A. Simon of Menzies Landing, Guyana. Margaret and Malcolm Chan-A-Sue handled the logistics and coordinated travels to Kaieteur National Park. This work was approved by the University of Minnesota Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (No. 0703A06582).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2012 Acoustical Society of America.