Abstract

We investigated phonotactic responses of amplexed and unamplexed females to different male calls in the Cricket Frog Acris crepitans blanchardi. A significantly higher proportion of amplexed females responded to male calls than did unamplexed females. When unamplexed females responded to male calls their phonotactic preferences did not differ from that of amplexed females. Amplexed and unamplexed females did not differ in their latency to respond to different male calls. Thus, the use of unamplexed females in phonotaxis experiments does not seem to bias any interpretation of preferences and would increase the number of testable females available.