Frogs utilize sound extensively to communicate. Their vocal signals have been shown to exhibit geographical dialects, facilitating the detection of signals amidst sounds emanating from other biotic sources locally. The extent to which abiotic sources play in shaping of the dialects is unclear. We investigated the vocal signals of male ultrasonic frogs (Odorrana tormota) in a remote village in Huangshan and compared them with those of males from a population in a different location within this mountain range. We found that, whereas the temporal characteristics of vocal signals of the two populations are indifferent, their fundamental frequencies (F0s) differ markedly.
Inter- and intra-population comparisons of the F0 revealed that frogs inhabiting noisier background tend to emit calls having higher F0. These results support the hypothesis that the upward frequency shift of the frogs’ communication signals is to minimize masking by the intense, predominantly low frequency background noise.