Yu Zu-Lin, Qiu Qiang, Xu Zhi-Min, Shen Jun-Xian
State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2006 Aug;192(8):801-6. doi: 10.1007/s00359-006-0125-6. Epub 2006 Apr 1.
The piebald odorous frog (Odorrana schmackeri), the large odorous frog (Odorrana livida) and the concave-eared torrent frog (Amolops tormotus) are sympatric species living near the same torrent streams in the vicinity of Mt. Huangshan, China. A recent study demonstrated that A. tormotus can use sound signals involving ultrasonic components for communication in a noisy environment, and another sympatric species, O. livida, can also perceive ultrasonic sound. Here we report data on the hearing range of O. schmackeri by studying auditory evoked potentials and single-unit data from the torus semicircularis. This frog exhibits its two most sensitive peaks at 2 kHz and 3.5-4.0 kHz with thresholds <42 dB SPL, with an upper frequency limit of hearing at 8.5 kHz with threshold of 87 dB SPL. The upper limit is much lower than those of O. livida and A. tormotus, at 22 and 34 kHz, respectively. It suggests that sympatric species may respond differently to similar environmental selection pressures sculpting auditory communication systems.
花臭蛙（Odorrana schmackeri）、大臭蛙（Odorrana livida）和凹耳湍蛙（Amolops tormotus）是同域物种，生活在中国黄山附近相同的山间溪流附近。最近的一项研究表明，凹耳湍蛙能够在嘈杂环境中使用包含超声波成分的声音信号进行交流，另一个同域物种大臭蛙也能够感知超声波。在此，我们通过研究半圆隆凸的听觉诱发电位和单神经元数据，报告了花臭蛙听觉范围的数据。这种蛙在2千赫兹以及3.5 - 4.0千赫兹处呈现出两个最敏感峰值，阈值<42分贝声压级，听觉上限频率为8.5千赫兹，阈值为87分贝声压级。该上限远低于大臭蛙和凹耳湍蛙的上限，它们的上限分别为22千赫兹和34千赫兹。这表明同域物种可能对塑造听觉通讯系统的类似环境选择压力有不同的反应。
