Acoustic Characteristics of Advertisement Calls in Babina adenopleura

作者:Fang, Xiaobin; Qiu, Xia; Zhou, Yilin; Yang, Luyi; Zhao, Yi; Zheng, Weihong; Liu, Jinsong*
来源:Asian Herpetological Research, 2015, 6(3): 220-228.

摘要

Acoustic communication is the most important form of communication in anuran amphibians. To understand the acoustic characteristics of male Babina adenopleura, we recorded advertisement calls and analyzed their acoustic parameters during the breeding season. Male B. adenopleura produced calls with a variable number of notes (1-5), and each note contained harmonics. Although 6% of call notes did not exhibit frequency modulation (FM), two call note FM patterns were observed: (1) upward FM; (2) upward downward FM. With the exception of 1- and 5- note calls, the duration of successive notes decreased monotonically. With the exception of 1 note calls, the fundamental frequency of the first note was lowest, then increased; the greatest change in the fundamental frequency was always between notes 1 and 2. The dominant frequency varied between calls. For example for the first call note the dominant frequency occurred in some cases in the first harmonic (located in the 605.320 +/- 64.533 Hz frequency band), the second harmonic (918 +/- 9 Hz band), the fourth harmonic (1712 +/- 333 Hz band), the sixth harmonic (the 2165 +/- 152 Hz band), the seventh harmonic (the 2269 +/- 140 Hz band), the eighth harmonic (the 2466 +/- 15 Hz band) or the ninth harmonic (the 2636 +/- 21 Hz band). Although male B. adenopleura advertisement calls have a distinctive structure, they have similar characteristics to the calls of the music frog, B. daunchina.