Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Ecology of Tropical Islands, Key Laboratory of Tropical Animal and Plant Ecology of Hainan Province, College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, 571158, China.
BMC Ecol Evol. 2024 Oct 12;24(1):126. doi: 10.1186/s12862-024-02312-4.
Some snakes emit hissing calls which are imitated by birds to deter potential predators. However, the effect of these snake and bird hisses on anuran risk recognition is not yet explored. Here we hypothesize that these hisses may advertise dangers to frogs and evoke their anti-predator responses. We used little torrent frogs (Amolops torrentis) as subjects and conducted sound playbacks to test their anti-predator behaviors. We found that little torrent frogs changed their calling behaviors during sympatric snake hiss playbacks, but showed no response to white noise and allopatric snake hiss playbacks. They did not respond to sympatric avian hiss that has low acoustic similarity with snake sounds. However, they decreased calling activity in response to sympatric avian hiss that has high acoustic similarity with snakes. As compared to other treatments, more individuals ceased calling during the playbacks of the highly similar bird hiss. These results suggest that frogs may recognize risks from snake and snake-like hissing calls and perform anti-predator responses.
有些蛇会发出嘶嘶声，而有些鸟类会模仿这些嘶嘶声来吓退潜在的捕食者。然而，这些蛇和鸟的嘶嘶声对蛙类的风险识别的影响尚未被探索。在这里，我们假设这些嘶嘶声可能向青蛙发出危险信号，并引发它们的防御性反应。我们使用小湍蛙（Amolops torrentis）作为实验对象，并进行了声音回放实验来测试它们的防御行为。我们发现，小湍蛙在听到同域蛇嘶声回放时会改变它们的叫声行为，但对白噪声和异域蛇嘶声回放没有反应。它们对与蛇声相似度较低的同域鸟鸣声也没有反应。然而，它们会减少对与蛇声相似度较高的同域鸟鸣声的鸣叫活动。与其他处理相比，在播放相似度高的鸟鸣声时，更多的个体停止了鸣叫。这些结果表明，青蛙可能能够识别出来自蛇和类似蛇的嘶嘶声的危险，并做出防御性反应。
