I worked with H. ebraccata at La Selva Biological Station . This site, in the lowland rainforests of Costa Rica, is home to 48 species of amphibians.
Most male frogs attract mates by giving advertisement calls.
At the marsh that I used as my study site, as many as 12 species called at the same time, leading to high levels of acoustic interference or background noise. I discovered that background noise limits the ability of females both to detect calls and to discriminate calls. Male green frogs defend small territories from which they call to attract females. An undergraduate, Jack Smith, and I found that calls of males are sufficiently variable to allow for individual discrimination. We also obtained preliminary data that suggested that frogs discriminate calls of strange and familiar males.