Walk near woods or water on any spring or summer night and you will hear a bewildering (and sometimes deafening) chorus of frog, toad, and insect calls. How are these calls produced? What messages are encoded within the sounds, and how do their intended recipients receive and decode these signals? How does acoustic communication affect and reflect behavioral and evolutionary factors such as sexual selection and predator avoidance? H. Carl Gerhardt and Franz Huber address these questions among many others, drawing on research from bioacoustics, behavior, neurobiology, and evolutionary biology to present the first integrated approach to the study of acoustic communication in insects and anurans. They highlight both the common solutions that these very different groups have evolved to shared challenges, such as small size, ectothermy (cold-bloodedness), and noisy environments, as well as the divergences that reflect the many differences in evolutionary history between the groups. Throughout the book Gerhardt and Huber also provide helpful suggestions for future research.

Walk near woods or water on any spring or summer night and you will hear a bewildering (and sometimes deafening) chorus of frog, toad, and insect calls. How are these calls produced? What messages are encoded within the sounds, and how do their intended recipients receive and decode these signals? How does acoustic communication affect and reflect behavioral and evolutionary factors such as sexual selection and predator avoidance? H. Carl Gerhardt and Franz Huber address these questions among many others, drawing on research from bioacoustics, behavior, neurobiology, and evolutionary biology to present the first integrated approach to the study of acoustic communication in insects and anurans. They highlight both the common solutions that these very different groups have evolved to shared challenges, such as small size, ectothermy (cold-bloodedness), and noisy environments, as well as the divergences that reflect the many differences in evolutionary history between the groups. Throughout the book Gerhardt and Huber also provide helpful suggestions for future research.

In order to communicate, animals send and receive signals that are subject to their particular anatomical, psychological, and environmental constraints. This SHAR volume discusses both the production and perception of acoustic signals. Chapters address the information that animals communicate, how the communication is developed and learned, and how communication systems have adapted and evolved within species. The book will give examples from a variety of species.

In this volume, 25 scientists from around the world review the most recent advances in the study of how frogs and toads communicate. The contributors - who are experts in disciplines including animal behaviour, developmental biology, endocrinology, evolution, ecology and neurobiology - examine this amphibian order's vocal, visual and chemical signals, the physiology and energetics of their production, neural processing, related behaviours, and evolutionary implications. As the chapters demonstrate, research developments have led to further understanding of the role of the anuran larynx in sound production, how the anuran brain recognizes sound, and how both of these processes are influenced by the animal's physiological state. The contributors also discuss male-to-male call strategies as well as how female preferences for call variation contribute to sexual selection, speciation and hybridization. The text presents material about kin recognition abilities and the surprising range of visual displays by tropical anurans, and examines how the inherent structure of the auditory system might generate sensory biases that influence signal evolution.

The study of animal communication has led to significant progress in our general understanding of motor and sensory systems, evolution, and speciation. However, one often neglected aspect is that signal exchange in every modality is constrained by noise, be it in the transmission channel or in the nervous system. This book analyses whether and how animals can cope with such constraints, and explores the implications that noise has for our understanding of animal communication. It is written by leading biologists working on different taxa including insects, fish, amphibians, lizards, birds, and mammals. In addition to this broad taxonomic approach, the chapters also cover a wide array of research disciplines: from the mechanisms of signal production and perception, to the behavioural ecology of signalling, the evolution of animal communication, and conservation issues. This volume promotes the integration of the knowledge gained by the diverse approaches to the study of animal communication and, at the same time, highlights particularly interesting fields of current and future research.

This book is a compendium of the latest research on acoustic communication in these highly vocal vertebrates. The chapters are written by experts currently investigating the physiology and behavior of amphibians, in the laboratory and in the field. This integrated approach provides a neuroethologically-driven and evolutionary basis for our understanding of acoustic communication and its underlying mechanisms. The intended audience includes senior undergraduates, physiologists, zoologists, evolutionary biologists and communication specialists.

This text brings together fundamental information on insect taxa, morphology, ecology, behavior, physiology, and genetics. Close relatives of insects, such as spiders and mites, are included.