Signal Redundancy and Receiver Permissiveness in Acoustic Mate Recognition by the Tungara Frog,Physalaemus pustulosus

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Abstract
The tungara frog has an advertisement call with two structurally and functionally distinct components: the whine is both necessary and sufficient for species recognition, and addition of chucks further enhances call attractiveness. Only the fundamental frequency of the whine contributes to phonotaxis; the upper harmonics play no role. Furthermore, only a small portion of the whine, within the first 0–100 msec, is necessary to elicit phonotaxis; there is some redundancy since either the 0–50 msec or the 50–100 msec portion elicits a response. Most of the remainder of the whine's fundamental further enhances call attractiveness. Only the amphibian papilla in the peripheral auditory system is involved in decoding the whine. In stark contrast, several chuck variants, which stimulate either the amphibian papilla or the basilar papilla, and white noise are as effective in enhancing call attractiveness as is the normal chuck, showing that either peripheral end organ can be involved in the perception of a more attractive call. Thus there is greater receiver specificity for decoding stimuli in interspecific mate choice, and greater receiver permissiveness for decoding stimuli in intraspecific mate choice; it appears that intraspecific mate choice can take advantage of a greater array of neural pathways for call decoding than can interspecific mate choice.

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