If memory serves: Multisensory male display improves female memory during mate sampling

Abstract

Across many taxa, males gather in leks to perform multisensory courtship displays for females. At a lek, changes in the sensory scene over the course of mate evaluation are inevitable. This dynamic nature makes a females ability to recall the location of individual signalers an important component of female mate choice. It is hypothesized that complex (especially multimodal) displays may improve a females ability to remember and thus discriminate amongst potential mates. To test this hypothesis, we presented female tungara frogs (Physalaemus (=Engystomops) pustulosus) with male calls (auditory) and robotic frogs (visual) that could later be obstructed from view via the lowering of blinds. Specifically, we asked if the visual component of a multimodal display improves the ability of a receiver to remember a signaler. While our initial experiment did not find memory instantiation in female frogs, subsequent experiments with a longer presentation time and a brief period of silence successfully instantiated memories in females. Moreover, females continued to demonstrate significant preferences for calls associated with the visual cue even after 25 s following the obstruction of the visual stimulus (robotic frog). Thus, we propose that the duration of presentation and/or the silent period impact memory capability. Silence is common in choruses, and our data suggest that complex, multisensory stimuli may have evolved to help females remember their preferred mate even with such fluctuations in signal production. LAY SUMMARYMultisensory signals function to stimulate one or more of a receivers senses, and in doing so, may make signalers more memorable to receivers. Multisensory signals are common in mating displays, including the advertisement of a male tungara frog: a call (acoustic) and a vocal sac inflation (visual). Here, we demonstrate that female tungara frogs were more likely to remember a multisensory male display over a unisensory display, but only after fluctuations in the signals intensity.