Do Visual Cues Affect Phonotaxis in Female Gray Treefrogs?
Mentor 1
Gerlinde Hoebel
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
24-4-2015 2:30 PM
End Date
24-4-2015 3:45 PM
Description
Although frogs are generally considered the embodyment of an acoustically communicating animal, recent research indicates that they also pay attention to visual cues. We conducted two-choice playback trials with female gray treefrogs and tested whether providing a visual cue (light-emitting diode, LED) makes a call more attractive relative to an otherwise identical call that is not joined with a visual cue. As predicted, the bimodal stimulus (sound + LED) was more attractive. We further examined whether the preference for the bimodal stimulus may be related to signal localization, which is expected to be easier towards visual than acoustic cues. To do this we conducted a detailed analysis of the speed and directionality of the female’s approach path towards unimodal (sound only) and bimodal (sound + LED) stimuli. Females did not approach the bimodal signal significantly faster or walking a shorter path, but the angular deviation at which they touched to target speaker was marginally significantly smaller when approaching the LED-combined stimulus. This suggests that female gray treefrogs take advantage of visual cues when approaching a call, thus potentially improving signal localization.
Do Visual Cues Affect Phonotaxis in Female Gray Treefrogs?
Union Wisconsin Room
Although frogs are generally considered the embodyment of an acoustically communicating animal, recent research indicates that they also pay attention to visual cues. We conducted two-choice playback trials with female gray treefrogs and tested whether providing a visual cue (light-emitting diode, LED) makes a call more attractive relative to an otherwise identical call that is not joined with a visual cue. As predicted, the bimodal stimulus (sound + LED) was more attractive. We further examined whether the preference for the bimodal stimulus may be related to signal localization, which is expected to be easier towards visual than acoustic cues. To do this we conducted a detailed analysis of the speed and directionality of the female’s approach path towards unimodal (sound only) and bimodal (sound + LED) stimuli. Females did not approach the bimodal signal significantly faster or walking a shorter path, but the angular deviation at which they touched to target speaker was marginally significantly smaller when approaching the LED-combined stimulus. This suggests that female gray treefrogs take advantage of visual cues when approaching a call, thus potentially improving signal localization.
