Abstract

Many animals acoustically communicate in large aggregations, producing biotic soundscapes. In turn, these natural soundscapes can influence the efficacy of animal communication, yet little is known about how variation in soundscape interferes with animals that communicate acoustically. We quantified this variation by analyzing natural soundscapes with the mid-frequency cover index and by measuring the frequency ranges and call rates of the most common acoustically communicating species. We then tested female mate choice in the túngara frog (Physalaemus pustulosus) in varying types of background chorus noise. We broadcast two natural túngara frog calls as a stimulus and altered the densities (duty cycles) of natural calls from conspecifics and heterospecifics to form the different types of chorus noise. During both conspecific and heterospecific chorus noise treatments, females demonstrated similar preferences for advertisement calls at low and mid noise densities but failed to express a preference in the presence of high noise density. Our data also suggest that nights with high densities of chorus noise from conspecifics and heterospecifics are common in some breeding ponds, and on nights with high noise density, the soundscape plays an important role diminishing the accuracy of female decision-making.

中文翻译：

---

沉默是性感的：音景的复杂性改变了túngara青蛙的伴侣选择

摘要

许多动物在声音上以大的集合体进行交流，从而产生生物声景。反过来，这些自然的音景会影响动物交流的功效，但人们对音景的变化如何干扰以声音进行交流的动物知之甚少。我们通过分析具有中频覆盖指数的自然音景，并通过测量最常见的声学交流物种的频率范围和呼叫率，来对这种变化进行量化。然后，我们测试了túngara蛙（Physalaemus pustulosus）在各种类型的背景合唱噪音中。我们广播了两个自然的túngara蛙叫声作为刺激，并改变了特定音和异音中自然音的密度（占空比），以形成不同类型的合唱噪声。在同种和异种合唱噪音处理过程中，女性在低和中等噪音密度下表现出对广告呼叫的相似偏好，但在高噪音密度的情况下未能表达出偏好。我们的数据还表明，在某些繁殖池中，具有高密度的来自特定种和异种的合唱噪声的夜晚很常见，而在噪声密度高的夜晚，音景起着降低女性决策准确性的重要作用。