In a situation familiar to female members of many species, female frogs' calls are rarely heard and, as a result, seldom studied. A team from the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil performed a meta-study on existing research on frog calls. Comparing the numbers of studies of male frog calls versus female frog calls produced surprising results.
They found 132 instances of female frog calls over 112 species—numbers that represented just 1.43% of all known species. That meant, the researchers note, that little to nothing is known about the calls of approximately 98.6% of female frog calls. They also found that most of the descriptions were anecdotal, suggesting little was learned from those calls that were studied.
Male frogs use their calls to court female frogs, giving them an obvious evolutionary incentive to be as loud as possible. However, with that in mind, researchers must develop different techniques to gather data on female frogs so their voices can be heard and studied. With over 8,000 known species of frogs and an unknown number yet to be discovered, there is no telling what we have been missing all this time.
Previously:
• Here are the cutest frogs on the internet
• Game update turns cheaters into frogs
• The sounds of tree frogs and howler monkeys in Costa Rica
