Synchronized calling in a treefrog (Smilisca sila). Short behavioral latencies and implications for neural pathways involved in call perception and production.

A neotropical treefrog, Smilisca sila, exhibits an unusual ability to synchronize its calling with that of neighbors such that calls often overlap temporally. Call playback experiments measured the latency to evoked calling in response to one-note and two-note mating calls. Approximately one-half of the responses overlapped the one-note stimulus call, while 20% overlapped the two-note stimulus call. Minimum response latencies were 55 ms and 78 ms in response to the one-note and two-note calls, respectively. These data were used to evaluate the efficacy of proposed neural pathways involved in call recognition and production. Based on neural and behavioral latencies presented in those studies, it is suggested that the proposed pathways for call recognition and production might not accommodate the short behavioral latencies in S. sila. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that call detection is decoupled from call recognition, the former requiring a shorter neural pathway thus permitting a shorter behavioral latency.