DOI: 10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83x8
title: Data from: Frogs with a southern drawl: Wide recognition space facilitates heterospecific aggression in territorial cricket frogs

description: Species recognition enables both females and males to make adaptive
 behavioral decisions in sympatric zones. Research on species recognition
 usually concentrates on how female mate choice prevents interspecies
 matings. Male-male competition also plays an important role in
 reproduction but is relatively understudied in the context of speciation.
 The present study investigates the aggressive thresholds for species
 recognition during male-male competition in northern and southern cricket
 frogs: two sympatric “sibling” species of frogs that are distinguishable
 based on advertisement calls. We conducted a field playback experiment
 that presented synthetic calls to male northern cricket frogs (Acris
 crepitans) that varied in temporal properties, spanning the range from
 conspecific to heterospecific call properties. Males responded
 aggressively to calls ranging from average conspecific calls to average
 heterospecific calls, notably excluding extreme heterospecific calls. We
 also modeled how optimal thresholds for species recognition depend on
 local proportions of conspecific and heterospecific individuals, and
 predicted as optimal the thresholds we measured under conditions of very
 few heterospecifics. Overall, our results show that recognition space for
 territorial aggression in male A. crepitans is larger than signal space,
 and their thresholds for recognition would enable heterospecific
 aggression. Such thresholds could be adaptive under social environments
 dominated by conspecifics, or in noisy choruses in which males compete
 with both conspecifics and heterospecifics to attract females by
 minimizing acoustic interference from rivals.
description: # Data from: Frogs with a southern drawl: Wide recognition space
 facilitates heterospecific aggression in territorial cricket frogs Dataset
 DOI: [10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83x8](10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83x8) ## Description of
 the data and file structure ### Files and variables #### File:
 Playback_response_data.csv **Description:** This data set includes all
 behavioral data from 40 paired field playbacks conducted on 20 male
 northern cricket frogs (*Acris crepitans*) in the summer of 2023. All
 field playbacks were conducted in Lake Matoaka in Williamsburg, Virginia.
 These data represent visual observations from playback trials and acoustic
 measurements from recordings of calling behavior. *Note:* Any cells left
 blank are due to the infeasibility of getting the data (i.e., the focal
 male escaped before physical measurements could be taken, aquatic
 vegetation prevented sightlines, etc.), or the male not calling during
 that trial period. ##### Variables * Recording: The unique file number of
 the recording. * Treatment: The synthetic call stimulus presented to the
 male during the stimulus period. "Ac" = conspecific,
 "H" = hybrid, "Ag" = heterospecific, and
 "AgX" = extreme heterospecific. * ID: The individual male
 tested. Efforts were made to avoid testing the same individuals repeatedly
 (see manuscript for more details). * Stim_Period: This reflects either the
 pre-stimulus, stimulus, or post-stimulus period for each trial. Each of
 these periods lasted 4 minutes and males were given approximately 10
 minutes between paired trials before the next pre-stimulus period. *
 Total_Calls: The number of calls made by the male. * Avg_Click_Rate: The
 average click rate throughout the period, calculated as the average of the
 number of clicks per call divided by their duration for all calls in the
 period (clicks/second). * Avg_Call_Dur: The average call duration
 (seconds). * Avg_Num_Clicks: The average number of clicks per call. *
 Avg_Dom_Freq: The average dominant frequency between all calls (Hz). *
 Avg_Click_Dur3: The average duration of clicks, calculated from the first,
 median, and last calls in the period (seconds). * Avg_Pulses3: The average
 number of pulses per click, calculated from the first, median, and last
 calls in the period. * Avg_Click_Rate3: The average click rate, calculated
 from the first, median, and last calls in the period (clicks/second). *
 Avg_Pulse_Rate3: The average pulse rate, calculated from the first,
 median, and last calls in the period (pulses/second). * Date: The date of
 the start of the trial. * Temp_C: The temperature of the air close to the
 surface of the water where the frog was calling, taken with a field
 thermometer (C). * AlwaysInflated: A binary variable with "1"
 indicating that the male remained inflated during the entire trial. *
 Orientation: A binary variable with "1" indicating that the male
 oriented towards the speaker during the stimulus period. * App_Dist_prop:
 The proportion of the SPL Distance that the frog covered in approaching
 the speaker, if applicable. * FootFlags: An integer variable for the
 number of foot flags observed. #### File: Playback_response_analysis.R
 **Description:** This R code includes all of our analyses of the
 behavioral response data from playbacks (Playback_response_data.csv) from
 the paper, as well as the code for generating our figures. We first
 correct the data for temperature, then continue on to construct a PCA of
 call and behavioral variables to generate an aggression index, and
 finally, perform statistical tests on select call variables and our
 aggression index to determine whether responses differed across
 treatments.