Browsing by Subject "acoustic communication"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Advertisement call length preferences of female Cope's gray treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis) in two-alternative choice tests
    (2020-07-23) LaBarbera, Katie; Nelson, Peggy B; Bee, Mark A; klabarbe@umn.edu; LaBarbera, Katie; University of Minnesota Animal Communication Lab
    Female Hyla chrysoscelis collected from the wild during the breeding season were tested in two-alternative choice tests for their preference between two synthetic calls, modeled closely after wild male calls, differing in their call length. This experiment was designed to examine whether females exhibit proportional processing (e.g., Weber's Law) of the acoustic signal. The data are being released along with the publication based upon them.
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    Data for: Inconsistent sexual signaling degrades optimal mating decisions in animals
    (2020-03-09) Tanner, Jessie C; Bee, Mark A; jessie.c.tanner@gmail.com; Tanner, Jessie C; University of Minnesota Animal Communication Lab
    Data from a series of phonotaxis tests used to investigate the effects of within-individual variation (inconsistency) in male signals and ambient chorus noise on female mating decisions in Cope's gray treefrog. This dataset is among only a few generated to examine the effects of within-individual variation in signal production on animal communication. The data are now being released in support of a publication describing our findings.
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    Data for: Species recognition is constrained by chorus noise, but not inconsistency in signal production, in Cope's gray treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis)
    (2020-06-18) Tanner, Jessie C; Bee, Mark A; jessie.c.tanner@gmail.com; Tanner, Jessie C; University of Minnesota Animal Communication Lab
    Optimal mate choice based on the assessment of communication signals can be constrained by multiple sources of noise. This dataset was created to examine the effects of two possible noise sources: ambient noise caused by the treefrog chorus and the inconsistency in signal production inherent to many animal communication systems. Our data were generated using two-choice phonotaxis tests of female Cope's gray treefrogs.
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    Data Supporting “Studying mate preferences using inertial measurement units: A validation study with treefrogs”
    (2023-01-09) Gupta, Saumya; Bee, Mark A; gupta333@umn.edu; Gupta, Saumya
    Investigations of mate choice continue to address fundamental questions about the mechanisms and evolution of animal behaviour. A common behavioural assay used to study acoustically guided mate choice with playback experiments is phonotaxis, a typically robust response in which a chooser approaches a sound source broadcasting acoustic signals, such as courtship songs or mating calls. Robust empirical studies of phonotaxis often require substantial laboratory facilities, such as a dedicated and sound-treated room or enclosure, in which the acoustic environment is controlled and in which animals are freely able to move about. The financial and space resources required to outfit a research laboratory to investigate phonotaxis may be sufficiently prohibitive such that some researchers are excluded from undertaking bioacoustic behavioural research. Here, we validate a new device designed to measure animal movements related to phonotaxis behaviour using an inertial measurement unit (IMU). The device is small and portable; it can be constructed for less than $300 US dollars; and the build instructions and code for operation are freely available (Gupta et al., 2020, HardwareX, 8, e00116). In a series of four experiments with treefrogs, we demonstrate using the device that an IMU-based approach to measuring animal movement can replicate a broad range of findings from traditional phonotaxis experiments on species recognition and sexual selection. We conclude by discussing several possible uses for IMU-based measurements of phonotaxis.
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    Frogs Exploit Statistical Regularities in Noisy Acoustic Scenes to Solve Cocktail-Party-Like Problems
    (2017-02-13) Lee, Norman; Ward, Jessica L; Vélez, Alejandro; Micheyl, Christophe; Bee, Mark A; lee33@stolaf.edu; Lee, Norman
    This submission is a supplement to the paper entitled “ Frogs Exploit Statistical Regularities in Noisy Acoustic Scenes to Solve Cocktail-Party-Like Problems” by Lee et al. (2017) published in Current Biology. In this paper, we develop an auditory filterbank inspired by the frog peripheral auditory system to quantify the natural scene statistics of frog breeding choruses. We show that natural chorus noise exhibits a high-level of spectrotemporal correlation (comodulation) among frequencies emphasized in advertisement calls. In 4 psychophysical experiments, we demonstrate that treefrogs can exploit comodulation in background noise to mitigate noise-induced errors in evolutionary critical mate-choice decisions.Frogs experienced fewer errors in recognizing conspecific calls and in selecting calls of high-quality mates in the presence of comodulated noise. This submission includes an implementation of the frog auditory filterbank in Matlab, source data, and other Matlab code used in data analyses to generate the main and supplemental figures presented in Lee et al. (2017).
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    Sexual Selection Constrained: The Expression of Mating Preferences in Acoustically Communicating Animals
    (2018-08) Tanner, Jessie
    Across animal taxa, receivers exert selection on signals and signalers through mate choice. More than a century of research has sought to uncover the targets of this selection and estimate its strength, often using behavioral assays in which receivers discriminate among signals. However, the existence of mating preferences thus discovered does not guarantee their expression in natural signaling contexts. Mating preferences may vary across an individual receiver’s lifetime due to intrinsic factors such as age or mating status. Signals are complex, meaning they comprise multiple components. Individual signalers may differ from one another on the basis of multiple components simultaneously, causing selection on one trait to modulate or reverse the selection on another trait. Additionally, signals are produced repeatedly and traits vary within as well as between signalers, introducing the potential for within-individual variation in signal production to influence the expression of mating preferences. Finally, environmental noise may limit signal recognition, localization, or discrimination in natural settings. Here, I explore these constraints on the expression of mating preferences that impose sexual selection.