Maintaining acoustic communication at a cocktail party: heterospecific masking noise improves signal detection through frequency separation.

ABSTRACT: We examined acoustic masking in a chirping katydid species of the Mecopoda elongata complex due to interference with a sympatric Mecopoda species where males produce continuous trills at high amplitudes. Frequency spectra of both calling songs range from 1 to 80 kHz; the chirper species has more energy in a narrow frequency band at 2 kHz and above 40 kHz. Behaviourally, chirper males successfully phase-locked their chirps to playbacks of conspecific chirps under masking conditions at signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of -8 dB. After the 2 kHz band in the chirp had been equalised to the level in the masking trill, the breakdown of phase-locked synchrony occurred at a SNR of +7 dB. The remarkable receiver performance is partially mirrored in the selective response of a first-order auditory inter

SUBMITTER: Siegert ME 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3971153 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature