Neglecting the call of the wild : captive frogs
like the sound of their own voice

Passos, L; Garcia, G; Young, RJ

Abstract

Acoustic communication is highly influential in the expression of social behavior by anuran amphibians, transmitting information about the individual's physical condition and motivation. We studied the phonotactic (approach movements) responses of wild and captive male golden mantella frogs to conspecific wild and captive playback calls to determine the impact of captivity on social behaviour mediated by vocalisations. Calls were recorded from one wild and two captive populations. Phonotaxis experiments were then conducted by attracting
M. aurantiaca males across a PVC grid on the forest floor or enclosure floor to a speaker. For each playback, the following parameters were recorded to define the accuracy of phonotaxis: (1) number of jumps; (2) jump angles; (3) jump distances; (4) path straightness. During
this experiment we observed that wild frogs had a similar behavioural (phonotaxis) response to calls independent of their source while frogs from Chester Zoo had a significantly stronger response to calls of other conspecifics held separately at Chester Zoo. The lack of appropriate phonotaxis response by captive bred frogs to the calls of wild conspecifics could have serious negative conservation implications, if the captive bred individuals were released back to the wild.

Citation

like the sound of their own voice. PLoS ONE, 12(7), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181931

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 10, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jul 21, 2017
• Publication Date: Jul 21, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 24, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 24, 2017
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 7
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181931
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181931
• Related Public URLs: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/
• Additional Information: Projects : PhD Project of Luiza F Passos