The acoustic adaptation hypothesis in a widely distributed South American frog: Southernmost signals propagate better.

ABSTRACT: Animal communication occurs in environments that affect the properties of signals as they propagate from senders to receivers. We studied the geographic variation of the advertisement calls of male Pleurodema thaul individuals from eight localities in Chile. Furthermore, by means of signal propagation experiments, we tested the hypothesis that local calls are better transmitted and less degraded than foreign calls (i.e. acoustic adaptation hypothesis). Overall, the advertisement calls varied greatly along the distribution of P. thaul in Chile, and it was possible to discriminate localities grouped into northern, central and southern stocks. Propagation distance affected signal amplitude and spectral degradation in all localities, but temporal degradation was only affected by propagation di

SUBMITTER: Velasquez NA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5934381 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature