Females of some species are receptive only to the specific song of a male of the same species; in others, however, mating calls are not necessary, and a female will mate with a male who is unable to sing because his wings have been removed.
Only high-frequency sounds like mating calls are heard in this way, but low-frequency noises can be detected through another mechanism.
Re "Muting the Squawk in a Modem Mating Call" (Q&A, July 10): That modem mating call is the sweetest in the world.
The implications for the mechanisms underlying the so-called "functionally referential signaling" are discussed elsewhere in more detail [Wheeler & Fischer, 2012], but it should be noted that the cognitive mechanisms supporting the responses to different alarm calls or different mating calls are probably the same.
Of course, he said, this idea could be tested by comparing the túngara species, Physalaemus pustulosus, to its near relatives -- other species of frog whose mating call is all whines, no chucks.
I was drawn to stories of "the last living" members of various species, and of two species in particular: the passenger pigeon, whose famous last member, Martha, lived in the Cincinnati Zoo, and a new species of lemur, whose unrequited mating call was heard by two scientists in Madagascar.
Thus, anuran mating calls have been frequently used for studies of mate choice [ 1- 4] but also for taxonomic purposes and phylogenetics (e.g. [ 8, 9]).
With mating calls, it has been shown that mouse lemurs that cannot be discerned visually respond more strongly to the calls of their own species, particularly when exposed to the calls of other mouse lemurs that they would encounter normally within their home range.
Familiarity was controlled in that each female had been housed in the same room as her father and her control male for longer than six months including time during the breeding season when mating calls and alarm calls are frequently heard in the animal rooms.
