Using citizen science to test for acoustic niche partitioning in frogs

Allen-Ankins, Slade, and Schwarzkopf, Lin (2022) Using citizen science to test for acoustic niche partitioning in frogs. Scientific Reports, 12. 2447.

[img]
Preview
PDF (Published Version) - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (1MB) | Preview
View at Publisher Website: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06396...
 
7
594


Abstract

The acoustic niche hypothesis proposes that to avoid interference with breeding signals, vocal species should evolve to partition acoustic space, minimising similarity with co-occurring signals. Tests of the acoustic niche hypothesis are typically conducted using a single assemblage, with mixed outcomes, but if the process is evolutionarily important, a pattern of reduced acoustic competition should emerge, on average, over many communities. Using a continental-scale dataset derived from audio recordings collected by citizen scientists, we show that frogs do partition acoustic space. Differences in calls were predominately caused by differences in spectral, rather than temporal, features. Specifically, the 90% frequency bandwidths of observed frog assemblages overlapped less than expected, and there was greater distance between dominant frequencies than expected. To our knowledge, this study is the first to use null models to test for acoustic niche partitioning over a large geographic scale.

Item ID: 73068
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2045-2322
Copyright Information: © The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. 0/.
Date Deposited: 16 Mar 2022 09:25
FoR Codes: 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 100%
SEO Codes: 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180606 Terrestrial biodiversity @ 100%
Downloads: Total: 594
Last 12 Months: 89
More Statistics

Actions (Repository Staff Only)

Item Control Page Item Control Page