Eleutherodactylus brittoni

Eleutherodactylus brittoni, the smallest and the least studied of the three species, has the most interesting communication system of all. This tiny frog produces pulses in a specific pattern between 3.0kHz and 6.3kHz (N=10), repeating itself two to three times before starting with the two-pulse call (Figure 5). Even though Ríos-López and Villanueva-Rivera, 2013, showed this species spectrogram, they focused in partitioning of acoustic environment, rather than their behavioral pattern component. These patterns were not known until now and their functional significance, if any, is unknown.

Furthermore, males generate harmonics extending above 22.0kHz, well in the ultrasound realm (Figure 6). It is not clear what is the functional significance of these ultrahigh vocalizations. But some species use them to avoid masking by background noise (Feng et al. 2006), and some species, such as Hylarana taipehensis (Van Denburgh, 1909), formerly known as Rana taipehensis, seem to use high intensity calls also, to cope with noisy environments (Sun and Narins 2005). [1]

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