ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2017
Earless toads sense low frequencies but miss the high notes.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- A general mechanism of airborne hearing in recent and early non-tympanate tetrapods.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- The continued importance of comparative auditory research to modern scientific discovery.Hearing research · 2023Review
- Convergent Anuran Middle Ear Loss Lacks a Universal, Adaptive Explanation.Brain, behavior and evolution · 2023Article
- Ontogeny of the middle ear and auditory sensitivity in the Natterjack toad (Epidalea calamita).The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- Hearing without a tympanic ear.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Review
- Size, microhabitat, and loss of larval feeding drive cranial diversification in frogs.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Strongly directional responses to tones and conspecific calls in the auditory nerve of the Tokay gecko,Journal of neurophysiology · 2021Article
- Article
- A new earless species ofZooKeys · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sensory losses or reductions are frequently attributed to relaxed selection. However, anuran species have lost tympanic middle ears many times, despite anurans' use of acoustic communication and the benefit of middle ears for hearing airborne sound. Here we determine whether pre-existing alternative sensory pathways enable anurans lacking tympanic middle ears (termed earless anurans) to hear airborne sound as well as eared species or to better sense vibrations in the environment. We used auditory brainstem recordings to compare hearing and vibrational sensitivity among 10 species (six eared, four earless) within the Neotropical true toad family (Bufonidae). We found that species lacking middle ears are less sensitive to high-frequency sounds, however, low-frequency hearing and vibrational sensitivity are equivalent between eared and earless species. Furthermore, extratympanic hearing sensitivity varies among earless species, highlighting potential species differences in extratympanic hearing mechanisms. We argue that ancestral bufonids may have sufficient extratympanic hearing and vibrational sensitivity such that earless lineages tolerated the loss of high frequency hearing sensitivity by adopting species-specific behavioural strategies to detect conspecifics, predators and prey.
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