When male suitors abound, female treefrogs have trouble picking mates
Much like an indecisive single person on a dating app, female treefrogs struggle to pick the most desirable mates when they have too many options to choose from. According to a new study published Aug. 12 in the journal iScience, when female Cope's gray treefrogs gather around ponds during mating season to listen to large groups of males chirping in noisy "choruses," they struggle to pick the…
When given a plethora of male suitors to choose from, female Cope's gray treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis) face challenges in selecting the most desirable mate, according to a recent study published in the journal iScience on August 12. This phenomenon, dubbed "choice overload," may have implications for the evolutionary trajectory of species.
Female treefrogs typically prefer males with longer calls, but when confronted with multiple options, their choice-making abilities are compromised. In experiments, when given choices between a longer target call and a shorter distractor call, females selected the target call 77% of the time with just two options but only 25% of the time when faced with eight different call options.
Background noise did not significantly impact their decision-making, suggesting that the issue lies in the sheer number of choices available rather than difficulty in hearing individual males. This "choice overload" could potentially maintain less-desirable male traits within populations by causing females to choose suboptimal mates, thus challenging established evolutionary theories.
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