Female treefrogs have trouble picking mates when they’re spoiled for choice, reveals new research. They struggle to pick the most desirable partners when male suitors abound – much like an indecisive single person on a dating app, say scientists.
Choice Overload
The phenomenon, described in the journal iScience, has been dubbed ‘choice overload’ by the American research team. The team studied Cope’s gray treefrogs, which live across wide swaths of the United States, ranging from Virginia, west to Texas, and north into Canada.
During mating season, males serenade females by puffing up their throats and emitting a series of high-pitched vibrations. To study how female treefrogs choose the best mates, the research team built a dating arena fit for amphibians: a two-meter-wide enclosure in a soundproof, temperature-controlled room.
The team placed female frogs one by one in the middle of that enclosure. The serenade then began: a series of speakers spread around the enclosure played recordings of real male frogs calling. Females could choose which call they preferred by hopping toward a speaker.
The research team observed that more male calls led to more confusion for the females. When females had just two options to choose from – for example, one target and one distractor – they hopped toward the longer target call 77% of the time. When females had to listen to eight different males’ calls, they selected the target call just 25% of the time.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
