Meeting Abstract
Multimodal communication is where an animal signals through more than one sensory channel. In most anurans, acoustic signals are the primary modality for reproductive communication. However, most anurans’ displays are not only acoustic but in fact are multimodal (e.g. visual and acoustic). One modality that has received little attention is the chemical modality. Calling anurans are most likely exposed to chemical cues, but the relationship between chemicals and calling behavior is poorly known. Our goal with this experiment was to establish whether advertising male gray treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis) can sense chemical cues released from conspecifics in water and adjust their mating calls. In order to test this, we caught male H. chrysoscelis and put them into cages. We proceeded to spray them with water that either a male (male cue treatment) or female (female cue treatment) conspecific had been soaking in, or a distilled water control, while recording their calls. We have a total of 67 recordings between our 3 treatment groups. The chemical did not affect the likelihood that males continued to call (male cue: 20/21 called; female cue 17/20 called; control 22/26 called). We also tested whether our treatments had an effect on the males’ call characteristics.
