Interference risk and the function of dynamic shifts in calling in the gray treefrog (Hyla versicolor)
Male gray treefrogs call to attract females under challenging acoustic conditions. At higher chorus densities, there is considerable background noise and a good chance that a male’s calls will often be overlapped by calls of other individuals. Call overlap may reduce the probability of mating because females prefer calls with internal pulse structure that is […]
Spectral preferences and the role of spatial coherence in simultaneous integration in gray treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis)
The perceptual analysis of acoustic scenes may often require the integration of simultaneous sounds arising from a single source. Few studies have investigated the cues that promote simultaneous integration in the context of acoustic communication in nonhuman animals. This study of Cope’s gray treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) examined female preferences based on spectral features of conspecific […]
Dip listening and the cocktail party problem in grey treefrogs: signal recognition in temporally fluctuating noise
Dip listening refers to our ability to catch brief ‘acoustic glimpses’ of speech and other sounds when fluctuating background noise levels momentarily decrease. Exploiting dips in natural fluctuations of noise contributes to our ability to overcome the ‘cocktail party problem’ of understanding speech in multitalker social environments. We presently know little about how nonhuman animals […]
Multitasking males and multiplicative females: dynamic signalling and receiver preferences in Cope’s grey treefrog
The ‘multitasking hypothesis’ for complex signal function predicts performance trade-offs between signal components that negatively covary (e.g. due to energetic or mechanical constraints) and receiver preferences for more extreme values of the negatively covarying components that are difficult to produce simultaneously. We tested these two predictions in Cope’s grey treefrogs, Hyla chrysoscelis. In a field […]