Skip Navigation



Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on August 11, 2009
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arp120
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
20/6/1153    most recent
arp120v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Baugh, A. T.
Right arrow Articles by Ryan, M. J.
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Baugh, A. T.
Right arrow Articles by Ryan, M. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Female túngara frogs vary in commitment to mate choice

Alexander T. Baugha,b and Michael J. Ryana,b,c

a Section of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas, 1 University Station C0930, Austin, TX 78712, USA b Institute for Neuroscience, The University of Texas, 1 University Station C0930, Austin, TX 78712, USA c Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, P.O. Box 0943-03092 Balboa Ancón, Republic of Panamá

Address correspondence to A.T. Baugh, 1 University Station, C0930 University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. E-mail: alex.baugh{at}gmail.com.


  Abstract

Mate choice studies most often examine female preferences based on population responses, thus potentially overlooking individual differences in behavior. Moreover, such studies typically use invariant stimulus conditions to infer preferences. By using population responses and static stimulus presentations, it is difficult to thoroughly understand the complexity of the mate choice process, including variation present between individuals. Here, we investigated phonotactic mate choice behavior in female túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) in response to temporally dynamic presentations of male advertisement calls. We tested females on repeated trials to examine individual differences and found considerable variation in the extent to which females update their mate choice decisions. Females in our study were bimodally distributed and thus broadly classified as either committed or uncommitted to an initial mate approach. We compared body condition measures of females differing behaviorally and determined that females with larger residual body masses were more committed to initial mate choices than less massive individuals, despite the fact that all females were in reproductive condition and field collected in amplexus. Our results suggest that anuran phonotaxis, once considered to be a highly stereotyped behavior, is more complex and variable than previously thought.

Key words: body condition, choosiness, dynamic behavior, individual differences, mate choice, phonotaxis.

Received 24 February 2009; revised 8 July 2009; accepted 19 July 2009.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.