Scale dependent processing of conspecific signals in the gray treefrog Hyla versicolor
type: CreativeWork
description: Acoustic communication is both widespread and often essential for successful mate selection, territorial defense, and many social behaviors in many taxa. Laboratory studies often use ‘simplified’, artificial stimuli which have high signal-to-noise rations and are easy to manipulate, but often do not capture the true range and variation of sounds experienced by organisms in the field. In nature, acoustic signals from socially aggregating animals are often emitted together, clustered in space and time. As these signals come from conspecifics they tend to be self-similar in many parameters, providing a challenge for the auditory system to detect, localize, and discriminate between target signals amongst the background. Additionally, signal-environment interactions during transmission further increase the difficulty. In this dissertation, I explore the processing of natural signals in the eastern grey treefrog, Hyla versicolor. During the mating season, numerous males gather near water sources and form choruses, emitting a stereotyped advertisement calls, creating a challenging auditory environment. Females later approach the chorus from daytime resting sites, often up to several hundred meters distant. Females must first detect and orient to the chorus, and subsequently detect, localize, and discriminate among individual male calls embedded in the chorus background. In chapter 2, I quantify the attraction of the chorus using recordings made at increasing distances from a single calling male. In the field, females oriented to the chorus at distances up to 100 m. In laboratory playback experiments, females were only attracted to chorus recordings made up to 32 m from a male. Chapter 3 explores whether sound amplitude or temporal structure degradation, dynamic acoustic features that changes with distance to a calling male, has a greater impact on chorus attractiveness and orientation. Through playback experiments we found that distance-dependent changes in call temporal s…
abstract: Acoustic communication is both widespread and often essential for successful mate selection, territorial defense, and many social behaviors in many taxa. Laboratory studies often use ‘simplified’, artificial stimuli which have high signal-to-noise rations and are easy to manipulate, but often do not capture the true range and variation of sounds experienced by organisms in the field. In nature, acoustic signals from socially aggregating animals are often emitted together, clustered in space and time. As these signals come from conspecifics they tend to be self-similar in many parameters, providing a challenge for the auditory system to detect, localize, and discriminate between target signals amongst the background. Additionally, signal-environment interactions during transmission further increase the difficulty. In this dissertation, I explore the processing of natural signals in the eastern grey treefrog, Hyla versicolor. During the mating season, numerous males gather near water sources and form choruses, emitting a stereotyped advertisement calls, creating a challenging auditory environment. Females later approach the chorus from daytime resting sites, often up to several hundred meters distant. Females must first detect and orient to the chorus, and subsequently detect, localize, and discriminate among individual male calls embedded in the chorus background. In chapter 2, I quantify the attraction of the chorus using recordings made at increasing distances from a single calling male. In the field, females oriented to the chorus at distances up to 100 m. In laboratory playback experiments, females were only attracted to chorus recordings made up to 32 m from a male. Chapter 3 explores whether sound amplitude or temporal structure degradation, dynamic acoustic features that changes with distance to a calling male, has a greater impact on chorus attractiveness and orientation. Through playback experiments we found that distance-dependent changes in call temporal s…
author: Christie, Kevin W.
language: en
keywords: Acoustic communication, Animal behavior, Amphibian, Animal communication, Anuran, Auditory biology, Auditory neuroscience, Field behavior, Hearing in noise, Laboratory behavior, Orientation, Phonotaxis, Neurophysiology, Noise, Sound localization
date published: 2019-11-26T20:35:05Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:44Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105678