Female preferences for call properties of giant spiny frog (Quasipaa spinosa)

Abstract

The advertisement call is an important recognition feature in Amphibian. For example, previous call of two-choice discrimination studies on the genus Quasipaa spinosa detected the phonotaxis of the female frog for the calls from different lineages. In this work, we used a single-stimulus design to analyse phonotactic response to stimulus and subsequently estimated the values of female preference functions for call duration and call rate, and recorded and analysed the properties of 756 advertisement calls from 40 males at five reproductive stages and conducted single-stimulus phonotaxis experiments to estimate female preference for different acoustic parameters. Our studies have shown Q. spinosa may have female mating preferences and possible variations in calls at five reproductive stages (from April to September). Correlations were established between certain call properties, i.e., pulse rate was positively correlated with fundamental frequency (r=0.151, P<0.01) and negatively correlated with dominant frequency (r=-0.141, P<0.01). The females frog had the shortest response time to calls of 4-note duration and rate of 15 n/min. Our results may provide acoustic information of the spiny frog to further develop effective conservation recommendations for this economically important but threatened animal.