Frequency information in the vibration-cued escape hatching of red-eyed treefrogs

摘要: Incidental acoustic and vibrational cues generated by predators are a potential source of information for prey assessing risk. Substrate vibrations should be excited most predators, frequency, amplitude or temporal properties could allow to distinguish predator from benign-source vibrations. Red-eyed treefrog embryos detect egg using during attacks, hatching rapidly prematurely escape. We recorded in clutches attacks five species three common types benign physical disturbance. analyzed their frequency distributions assess if how used discriminate between vibration sources playbacks examine the effects on escape response. Vibrations produced disturbances generally have broad overlapping distributions, all frequencies also disturbances. Decision rules based distribution alone would therefore result either high levels response (false alarms) failures hatch (missed cues). Nevertheless, not nature, our playback results show that is an important component decision. Embryos combine with refine Moreover, comparing spectra suggests presence energy outside range characteristic might serve as indicator