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Female Courtship Call of the Iberian Midwife Toad (Alytes cisternasii)

2001; The Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles; Volume: 35; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1565904

1937-2418

Jaime Bosch, Rafael Márquez, Rafael Márquez,

Amphibian and Reptile Biology

We describe a female courtship call, a vocalization produced before amplexus, by female Iberian midwife toads as a response recorded a large sample of femae responses to synthetic calls imitating male calls in two-speaker phonotaxis playback tests. Female courtship calls were tonal calls similar to male advertisement calls but shorter in duration. Courtship call duration by both sexes was negatively correlated with body temperature of toads. Unlike male advertisement calls, which were always a single note, female courtship calls comprised a sequence of 1-5 different notes; note duration of the last note was longest Both duration and dominant frequency were much more variable in female court- ship calls than in male advertisement calls. No correlations were found between female body size and call characteristics.