Parallel changes in mate-attracting calls and female preferences in autotriploid tree frogs

Abstract

For polyploid species to persist, they must be reproductively isolated from their diploid parental species, which coexist at the same time and place at least initially. In a complex of biparentally reproducing tetraploid and diploid tree frogs in North America, selective phonotaxis—mediated by differences in the pulse-repetition (pulse rate) of their mate-attracting vocalizations—ensures assortative mating. We show that artificially produced autotriploid females of the diploid species ( Hyla chrysoscelis ) show a shift in pulse-rate preference in the direction of the pulse rate produced by males of the tetraploid species ( Hyla versicolor ). The estimated preference function is centred near the mean pulse rate of the calls of artificially produced male autotriploids. Such a parallel shift, which is caused by polyploidy per se and whose magnitude is expected to be greater in autotetraploids, may have facilitated sympatric speciation by promoting reproductive isolation of the initially formed polyploids from their diploid parental forms. This process also helps to explain why tetraploid lineages with different origins have similar advertisement calls and freely interbreed.