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.

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.

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 volume presents the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Advances in Vertebrate Neuroethology" held at the University of Kassel, Federal Republic of Germany in August 1981. During the last decade much progress has been made in understanding the neurophysiological bases of behavior in both vertebrates and invertebrates. The reason for this is that a number of new physiological, anatomical, and histochemical techniques have recently been developed for brain research which can now be combined with ethological methods for the analysis of animal behavior to form a new field of research known as "Neuroethology". The term Neuroethology was originally introduced by S.L.Brown and R.W.Hunsperger (1963) in connection with studies on the activation of agonistic behaviors by electrical brain stimulation in cats. Neuroethology was more closely defined by G.Hoyle (1970) in the context of a review on cellular mechanisms underlying behavior of invertebrates. Since the 6th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience held in Toronto in 1976, Neuroethology has become established as a session topic.

Most animal communication has evolved and now takes place in the context of a communication network, i.e. several signallers and receivers within communication range of each other. This idea follows naturally from the observation that many signals travel further than the average spacing between animals. This is self evidently true for long-range signals, but at a high density the same is true for short-range signals (e.g. begging calls of nestling birds). This book provides a current summary of research on communication networks and appraises future prospects. It combines information from studies of several taxonomic groups (insects to people via fiddler crabs, fish, frogs, birds and mammals) and several signalling modalities (visual, acoustic and chemical signals). It also specifically addresses the many areas of interface between communication networks and other disciplines (from the evolution of human charitable behaviour to the psychophysics of signal perception, via social behaviour, physiology and mathematical models).

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.