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Crossmodal comparisons of signal components allow for relative-distance assessment.
Halfwerk, Wouter; Page, Rachel A; Taylor, Ryan C; Wilson, Preston S; Ryan, Michael J.
Afiliação
  • Halfwerk W; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, PO Box 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama; Institute of Biology, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands. Electronic address: wouter.halfwerk@gmail.com.
  • Page RA; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, PO Box 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama.
  • Taylor RC; Department of Biology, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD 21801, USA.
  • Wilson PS; Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
  • Ryan MJ; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, PO Box 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancón, Republic of Panama; Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Curr Biol ; 24(15): 1751-5, 2014 Aug 04.
Article em En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-25042586
Animals have multiple senses through which they detect their surroundings and often integrate sensory information across different modalities to generate perceptions. Animal communication, likewise, often consists of signals containing stimuli processed by different senses. Stimuli with different physical forms (i.e., from different sensory modalities) travel at different speeds. As a consequence, multimodal stimuli simultaneously emitted at a source can arrive at a receiver at different times. Such differences in arrival time can provide unique information about the distance to the source. Male túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) call from ponds to attract females and to repel males. Production of the sound incidentally creates ripples on the water surface, providing a multimodal cue. We tested whether male frogs attend to distance-dependent cues created by a calling rival and whether their response depends on crossmodal comparisons. In a first experiment, we showed distance-dependent changes in vocal behavior: males responded more strongly with decreasing distance to a mimicked rival. In a second experiment, we showed that males can discriminate between relatively near and far rivals by using a combination of unimodal cues, specifically amplitude changes of sound and water waves, as well as crossmodal differences in arrival time. Our data reveal that animals can compare the arrival time of simultaneously emitted multimodal cues to obtain information on relative distance to a source. We speculate that communicative benefits from crossmodal comparison may have been an important driver of the evolution of elaborate multimodal displays.
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Texto completo: 1 Coleções: 01-internacional Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Anuros / Vocalização Animal / Percepção de Distância Limite: Animals País/Região como assunto: America central / Panama Idioma: En Revista: Curr Biol Assunto da revista: BIOLOGIA Ano de publicação: 2014 Tipo de documento: Article País de publicação: Reino Unido
Texto completo
Adicionar na Minha BVS
Imprimir
XML
PubMed Links
Buscar no Google

Texto completo: 1 Coleções: 01-internacional Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Anuros / Vocalização Animal / Percepção de Distância Limite: Animals País/Região como assunto: America central / Panama Idioma: En Revista: Curr Biol Assunto da revista: BIOLOGIA Ano de publicação: 2014 Tipo de documento: Article País de publicação: Reino Unido