Effect of natural abiotic soil vibrations, rainfall and wind on anuran calling behavior: a test with captive-bred midwife toads (Alytes obstetricans).

ABSTRACT: Anurans are known to detect vibrations, but few studies explore relationships between vibrations and resultant behaviors. We studied the reaction of calling captive-bred male midwife toads (Alytes obstetricans) to the randomized playback of a vibrational crescendo stimulus train. We considered two sources of natural abiotic vibrational stimuli: rainfall and wind. Rainfall was expected to induce calling and wind was expected to inhibit it. Playback experiments with two synthetic tones (200 Hz and 300 Hz) tested the sensitivity to pure tones and could possibly reveal a hearing sensitivity trend between these frequencies. The toads did not increase call rate in response to rainfall vibrations and only one of the five wind stimulus levels caused a significant decrease in call rate. This limite

SUBMITTER: De Luca J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9742647 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature