Jianguo Cui

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Chinese Academy of Sciences

Mate choice plays a pivotal role in wildlife reproduction and population sustainability. The assessment of sexual displays in noise poses a common challenge for wildlife. Multimodal signals are hypothesized to be favored since they improve the accuracy of signal detection and discrimination in noise. We verified whether female treefrogs exhibit a h...

Mammals suffer permanent hearing impairment from the loss of auditory hair cells due to their inability to regenerate. In contrast, lower vertebrates exhibit extraordinary capacity for hair cell regeneration and hearing restoration, but the mechanisms remain unclear. Here we characterize the single-cell atlas of Xenopus laevis inner ear and perform...

Noise pollution has been shown to affect wild animals in various ways, but little is known about its consequences at the community level. Investigating animals’ overall vocal responses to noise across multiple sympatric species can reveal the complex nature of noise impacts but is challenging. In this study, we employed social network analysis (SNA...

Information compression is widely regarded as a fundamental principle that applies to human language. Zipf's law of abbreviation and MenzeratheAltmann's law are two linguistic laws related to information compression and have been demonstrated in human language and other communication systems. Female choice and male-male competition in anurans (frog...

The tympanic middle ear is important for anuran hearing on land. However, many species have partly or entirely lost their tympanic apparatus. Previous studies have compared hearing sensitivities in species that possess and lack tympanic membranes capable of sound production and acoustic communication. However, little is known about how these hearin...

Recently we showed that limb movements associated with anti-parasite defenses can enhance acoustic signal attraction in male little torrent frogs ( Amolops torrentis ), which suggests a potential pathway for physical movements to become co-opted into mating displays (Zhao et al., 2022). Anderson et al. argue for alternative explanations of our resu...

The ability to discriminate relative quantities, one of the numerical competences, is considered an adaptive trait in uncertain environments. Besides humans, previous studies have reported this capacity in several non-human primates and birds. Here, we test whether red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans) can discriminate different relative qu...

Vocal communication plays an important role in survival, reproduction, and animal social association. Birds and mammals produce complex vocal sequence to convey context-dependent information. Vocalizations are conspicuous features of the behavior of most anuran species (frogs and toads), and males usually alter their calling strategies according to...

动物社会网络分析法(animal social network analysis, ASNA)是一套用于研究动物社会性、量化个体间各种社会关系、揭示个体行为与社会结构动态之间联系的工具, 它被广泛应用于多种动物类群的行为学研究。该分析方法所提供的一系列指标也非常适用于探究动物的声音交流及鸣声结构。在此, 本文首先简要介绍了网络分析法的基本概念及一些常用的指标; 然后基于野外和室内研究实例, 阐述了如何利用ASNA建立声音通讯网络、量化声音交流, 以及将ASNA与被动声学监测技术相结合的应用前景; 随后探讨了ASNA在分析鸣声相似性及鸣声地理变异中的优势; 最后概述了ASNA在解析鸣声结构和句法规则中的应用。ASNA为研究动物通讯网络以及声音信号的适应性进化提供了新的视角和新的思路。

Alarm signals and cues are crucial to animal survival and vary greatly across species. Eavesdropping on heterospecific alarm signals and cues can provide eavesdroppers with information about potential threats. In addition to acoustic alarm signals, evidence has accumulated that chemical alarm cues and disturbance cues can also play a role in alerti...

Human disturbance, particularly road traffic, is one of the greatest threats to wildlife. Considering the association between alerting behavior and the survival of animals, it is important to study the effects of road traffic on alerting behavior of wildlife. Previous studies assessing the short-term impact of road traffic on alerting behavior of w...

Animal communication is often hampered by noise interference. Noise masking has primarily been studied in terms of its unimodal effect on sound information provision and use, while little is known about its cross-modal effect and how animals weigh unimodal and multimodal courtship cues in noisy environments. Here, we examined the cross-modal effect...

Chelonians are considered the least vocally active group of extant reptiles and known as “low-frequency specialists” with a hearing range of <1.0 kHz. As they are ectothermic organisms, most of their physiological and metabolic processes are affected by temperature, which may include the auditory system responses. To investigate the influence of te...

Communication signals by both human and non-human animals are often interrupted in nature. One advantage of multimodal cues is to maintain the salience of interrupted signals. We studied a frog that naturally can have silent gaps within its call. Using video/audio-playbacks, we presented females with interrupted mating calls with or without a simul...

Many animals rely on complex signals that target multiple senses to attract mates and repel rivals. These multimodal displays can however also attract unintended receivers, which can be an important driver of signal complexity. Despite being taxonomically widespread, we often lack insight into how multimodal signals evolve from unimodal signals and...

Mate choice in frogs depends heavily on acoustic communication, and females in many species possess an inherent preference for longer and/or more complex calls. Recently, it has become clear that conspecific chemical cues can also be useful in attracting potential mates in anuran species. However, how conspecific chemical cues influence mate choice...

Many animals rely on complex sexual signals that target multiple senses to attract mates and repel rivals. These multimodal mating displays can however also attract unintended receivers, which can be an important driver of signal complexity. Despite being taxonomically widespread, we often lack insight into how multimodal signals evolve from unimod...

Human activities worldwide are increasingly releasing low-frequency noise into the environment. Anthropogenic noise imposes a novel stress for wild animals and has become an increasing global concern. Many animals have been found to mitigate noise disturbance by modifying their acoustic parameters, yet the calling behaviours of species that breed n...

Background The acoustic adaptation hypothesis (AAH) states that signals should evolve towards an optimal transmission of the intended information from senders to intended receivers given the environmental constraints of the medium that they traverse. To date, most AAH studies have focused on the effect of stratified vegetation on signal propagation...

Significance Endothermic animals must survive periods of seasonally lowered temperature, coincident with lowered food supply. While we know much about hibernation and migration as survival strategies, the responses of nonhibernating, nonmigrating species are more opaque, yet how these animals survive such periods is important to understand their po...

Background Signal detection is crucial to survival and successful reproduction, and animals often modify behavioral decisions based on information they obtained from the social context. Undeniably, the decision-making in male-male competition and female choice of anurans (frogs and toads) depends heavily on acoustic signals. However, increasing emp...

Both human and nonhuman animals communicating acoustically face the problem of noise interference, especially anurans during mating activities. Previous studies concentrated on the effect of continuous noise on signal recognition, but it is still unknown whether different notes in advertisement calls impaired by noise affect female choice and male–...

Diverse animal species use multimodal communication signals to coordinate reproductive behavior. Despite active research in this field, the brain mechanisms underlying multimodal communication remain poorly understood. Similar to humans and many mammalian species, anurans often produce auditory signals accompanied by conspicuous visual cues (e.g.,...

Animal choruses, such as those found in insects and frogs, are often intermittent. Thus, females sampling males in the chorus might have to remember the location of the potential mates' calls during periods of silence. Although a number of studies have shown that frogs use and prefer multimodal mating signals, usually acoustic plus visual, it is no...

Ontogenetic development of hearing sensitivity has been verified in many groups of vertebrates, but not turtles. Turtles exhibit sexual dimorphism in hearing. To examine the development of hearing in female turtles, auditory brainstem responses (ABR) were compared by assessing the hearing-sensitivity bandwidth, ABR threshold, and latency of female...

There is increasing evidence that many anurans use multimodal cues to detect, discriminate and/or locate conspecifics and thus modify their behaviors. To date, however, most studies have focused on the roles of multimodal cues in female choice or male-male interactions. In the present study, we conducted an experiment to investigate whether male se...

Sex differences in vocalization have been commonly found in vocal animals. It remains unclear, however, how animals perceive and discriminate these differences. The amplitudes and latencies of event-related potentials (ERP) components can reflect the auditory processing efficiency and time course. We investigated the neural mechanisms of auditory p...

Hearing sensitivity is of general interest from the perspective of understanding the functionality and evolution of vertebrate auditory systems. Sexual dimorphism of auditory systems has been reported in several species of vertebrates, but little is known about this phenomenon in turtles. Some morphological characteristics, such as middle ear and t...

Developmental plasticity of hearing sensitivity (DPHS) has been verified in some groups of vertebrates. Turtles face a trade-off between terrestrial and aquatic hearing in different acoustic environments throughout ontogeny. However, how chelonian hearing sensitivity changes throughout ontogeny is still unclear. To verify DPHS in turtles, auditory...

Temperature fluctuation affects physiology and behaviour in ectotherms. Previous studies revealed that the phonotactic preference of female frogs was affected by temperature fluctuations; however, the corresponding plasticity of peripheral auditory sensitivity is unclear. In the present study, the auditory sensitivity of little torrent frogs (Amolo...

Abstract Social network analysis has been widely used to investigate the dynamics of social interactions and the evolution of social complexity across a range of taxa. Anuran species are highly dependent on vocal communication in mate choice; however, these species have rarely been the subject of social network analysis. The present study used soci...

The matched filter hypothesis proposes that the tuning of auditory sensitivity should match the spectral character of calls, suggesting that sender calls and receiver auditory systems have co-evolved. However, studies provide mixed evidence, and in some species, this match is imprecise. Here, we analyzed the acoustic characteristics of male calls a...

Sex differences in both vocalization and auditory processing have been commonly found in vocal animals, although the underlying neural mechanisms associated with sexual dimorphism of auditory processing are not well understood. In this study we investigated whether auditory perception exhibits sexual dimorphism in Xenopus laevis. To do this we meas...

Seasonal changes in the structure and function of the vertebrate brain have been described in many species, particularly in seasonal breeders. However, it remains unclear whether sexual dimorphism varies between breeding seasons for specific brain regions. Auditory event-related potential (ERP) changes were evaluated in the Emei music frog (Babina...

Variations in the costs or benefits of signaling may result in variations in signaling strategies. The adverse conditions hypothesis suggests that reliable signaling can be improved under stress or adverse environmental conditions, but the empirical cases are limited. In the present study, we manipulated food availability in male Xenopus laevis in...

Noise is one of the main factors that can influence the processes of sound communication across a wide range of animal groups. Although the effects of ambient noise on animal communication, including anthropogenic noise, have received increasing attention, few studies have examined changes in the fine structure of acoustic signals produced by vocal...

The matched filter hypothesis proposes that the auditory sensitivity of receivers should match the spectral energy distribution of the senders’ signals. If so, receivers should be able to distinguish between species-specific and hetero-specific signals. We tested the matched filter hypothesis in two sympatric species, Chiromantis doriae and Feihyla...

Mating patterns exhibit considerable intra- and interspecific variation. Sexual selection can lead to the occurrence of random and assortative mating in different populations of the same species. Thus, understanding variation in mating decisions is crucial to understanding variation in the direction of sexual selection. We investigated natural mati...

Allocating attention to biologically relevant stimuli in a complex environment is critically important for survival and reproductive success. In humans attention modulation is regulated by the frontal cortex, and often reflected by changes in specific components of the event-related potential (ERP). Although brain networks for attention modulation...

The article, “Sometimes noise is beneficial. © 2017 Japan Ethological Society and Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature

Male-male vocal competition in anuran species is critical for mating success; however, it is also energetically demanding and highly time-consuming. Thus, we hypothesized that males may change signal elaboration in response to competition in real time. Male serrate-legged small treefrogs (Kurixalus odontotarsus) produce compound calls that contain...

Background The evolution of exaggerated vocal signals in anuran species is an important topic. Males and females have both evolved the ability to discriminate communication sounds. However, the nature of sexual dimorphism in cognition and sensory discrimination and in the evolution and limitation of sexual signal exaggeration remain relatively unex...

Raw data of female phonotaxis tests

Raw data of male evoked vocal response experiments

Many kinds of environmental noise can interfere with acoustic communication and efficient decision making in terrestrial species. Here we identified an exception to this generalization in a streamside species, the little torrent frog (Amolops torrentis) which communicates in a stream noise environment. To determine whether stream noise can act as a...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146677.].

Anesthesia is known to affect the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in mice, rats, birds and lizards. The present study investigated how the level of anesthesia affects ABR recordings in an amphibian species, Babina daunchina. To do this, we compared ABRs evoked by tone pip stimuli recorded from 35 frogs when Tricaine methane sulphonate (MS-222) an...

The matched filter hypothesis proposes that the tuning of auditory sensitivity and the spectral character of calls will match in order to maximize auditory processing efficiency during courtship. In this study, we analyzed the acoustic structure of male calls and both male and female hearing sensitivities in the little torrent frog (Amolops torrent...

Hearing sensitivity affects survival and reproduction in animals that communicate vocally. The Chinese tiger frog exhibits sexual dimorphism in body size, reflecting the evolution of mating behaviour and life-history strategies. In this study, we recorded auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) to determine hearing sensitivity in both female and male f...

Many animal species use acoustic signals for social communication including attracting mates, defending resources and assessing risks. Nevertheless, a variety of ambient noise sources often interfere with sound communication and efficient decision making. In the present study we identified an exception to this generalization in a streamside species...

Many animal species use acoustic signals for social communication including attracting mates, defending resources and assessing risks. Nevertheless, a variety of ambient noise sources often interfere with sound communication and efficient decision making. In the present study we identified an exception to this generalization in a streamside species...

It is generally thought that for species using vocal communication the spectral properties of the sender’s calls should match the frequency sensitivity of the receiver’s auditory system. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated both sender and receiver characteristics in anuran species. In the present study, auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) w...

A hallmark of sexual selection by mate choice is the evolution of exaggerated traits, such as longer tails in birds and more acoustic components in the calls of birds and frogs. Trait elaboration can be opposed by costs such as increased metabolism and greater predation risk, but cognitive processes of the receiver can also put a brake on trait ela...

Most species are believed to evolve larger body sizes over evolutionary time. Previous studies have suggested that sexual selection, through male-male competition and female choice, favors larger males. However, there is little evidence of selection against large size. The female serrate-legged small treefrogs (Philautus odontotarsus) must carry pa...

Relationships between body mass and dominant frequency of calls in P. odontotarsus. (PDF)

The design of acoustic signals and hearing sensitivity in socially communicating species would normally be expected to closely match in order to minimize signal degradation and attenuation during signal propagation. Nevertheless, other factors such as sensory biases as well as morphological and physiological constraints may affect strict correspond...

Male signaling influences both female choice and male-male competition. Although male signaling characteristics and female preferences have been shown to coevolve in many species, few studies have examined whether male signal characteristics and male receiver responses related to male-male competition also coevolve. The present study tested the hyp...

Male-male vocal competition in anuran species may be influenced by cues related to the temporal sequence of male calls as well by internal temporal, spectral and spatial ones. Nevertheless, the conditions under which each type of cue is important remain unclear. Since the salience of different cues could be reflected by dynamic properties of male-m...

Species that use communication sounds to coordinate social and reproductive behavior must be able to distinguish vocalizations from nonvocal sounds as well as to identify individual vocalization types. In this study we sought to identify the neural localization of the processes involved and the temporal order in which they occur in an anuran specie...

Male frogs behave differently from females during the breeding season, particularly with respect to courtship displays and in response to mating signals. In search of physiological correlates of these differences, the present study measured changes in baseline electroencephalogram (EEG) power output within four frequency bands in the telencephalon...

Male–male vocal competition in anuran species is critical for mating success; however, it is also highly time-consuming, energetically demanding and likely to increase predation risks. Thus, we hypothesized that changes in the social context would cause male vocal competition to change in real time in order to minimize the costs and maximize the be...

Female mate choice is of importance for individual fitness as well as a determining factor in genetic diversity and speciation. Nevertheless relatively little is known about how females process information acquired from males during mate selection. In the Emei music frog, Babina daunchina, males normally call from hidden burrows and females in the...

In anurans, the outcomes of male-male contests and female choice are often associated with body size. In some species, males evaluate an opponent's fighting ability and females evaluate male quality on the basis of male communication signals, which are thought to reflect information concerning male body size. Nevertheless, previous studies reveal t...

In anurans reproductive behavior is strongly seasonal. During the spring, frogs emerge from hibernation and males vocalize for mating or advertising territories. Female frogs have the ability to evaluate the quality of the males' resources on the basis of these vocalizations. Although studies revealed that central single torus semicircularis neuron...

During female mate choice, both the male's phenotype and resources (e.g. his nest) contribute to the chooser's fitness. Animals other than humans are not known to advertise resource characteristics to potential mates through vocal communication; although in some species of anurans and birds, females do evaluate male qualities through vocal communic...

Dramatic changes in neocortical electroencephalogram (EEG) rhythms are associated with the sleep-waking cycle in mammals. Although amphibians are thought to lack a neocortical homologue, changes in rest-activity states occur in these species. In the present study, EEG signals were recorded from the surface of the cerebral hemispheres and midbrain o...

Generally, the function of vocalizations made by male anurans are to attract females or defend resources. Typically, males vocalize in choruses during one or more periods in a twenty-four-hour cycle, which varies, however, among species. Nevertheless, the causal factors influencing circadian variations of calling patterns in anuran species are not...

Both pregnancy and lactation are associated with hyperphagia, and circulating leptin levels are elevated during pregnancy but decreased during lactation in Brandt's voles, Lasiopodomys brandtii. Previous findings suggest that impaired leptin sensitivity contributes to hyperphagia during pregnancy. The present study aimed to examine whether the decr...

Electroencephalogram (EEG) waveforms reflect the summed slow potentials generated by cortical neurons and can therefore be used to infer functional processes. In many species, individuals in the reproductive stage are more active and sensitive to species-typical stimuli than those in the non-reproductive stage. In the present study, changes in EEG...

The acoustic structure of 18 male advertisement calls of the "music frog" (Babina daunchina), indigenous to the Emei mountain area of Sichuan province in southwest China was analyzed. Previous results showed that Babina typically call from within hidden burrows made by the males and must rely strongly on acoustic information for mate choice. Functi...

Males compete for access to resources or females or to influence female mate choice in many animal species. Male competitive activities are accompanied by high-energy expenditure and increased risk of predator detection. We therefore hypothesized that information predicting female receptivity could affect male competition strategies in species in w...

During lactation, female small mammals frequently reduce their fat reserves to very low levels. The function of this reduction is unclear, as calculations suggest that the contribution of the withdrawn energy from fat to the total energy balance of lactation is trivial. An alternative hypothesis is that reducing fat leads to a reduction in circulat...

Male and female African Clawed Frogs (Xenopus laevis) produce calls and engage in dueting in both silt-filled ponds and laboratory aquaria. Previous research has established that males produce different answer calls in response to receptive (11–12 Hz click rate) and nonreceptive (click rate of 4 Hz) female calls. In the present study, in addition t...

In anurans, females generally remain silent during mating or only produce calls of very low intensity before mating. Consequently the functions of female calls are not as well understood as those produced by males. We investigated a novel female call produced during mating in the Emei music frog. The functions of the female call during reproductive...