Browsing by Subject "auditory perception"

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    Data supporting "Informational Masking Constrains Vocal Communication in Nonhuman Animals"
    (2023-01-09) Gupta, Saumya; Kalra, Lata; Rose, Gary J; Bee, Mark A; gupta333@umn.edu; Gupta, Saumya
    Noisy social environments constrain human speech communication in two important ways: spectrotemporal overlap between signals and noise can reduce speech audibility (“energetic masking”) and noise can also interfere with processing the informative features of otherwise audible speech (“informational masking”). To date, informational masking has not been investigated in studies of vocal communication in nonhuman animals, even though many animals make evolutionarily consequential decisions that depend on processing vocal information in noisy social environments. In this study of a treefrog, in which females choose mates in noisy breeding choruses, we investigated whether informational masking disrupts the processing of vocal information in the contexts of species recognition and sexual selection. The associated data for this work is being released prior to the publication of the manuscript for peer review.
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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.