Data from: Identity signaling, identity reception and the evolution of social recognition in a Neotropical frog

Animals recognize familiar individuals to perform a variety of important
social behaviors. Social recognition is often mediated by communication
between signalers who produce signals that contain identity information
and receivers who categorize these signals based on previous experience.
We tested two hypotheses about adaptations in signalers and receivers that
enable the evolution of social recognition using two species of closely
related territorial poison frogs. Male golden rocket frogs (Anomaloglossus
beebei) recognize the advertisement calls of conspecific territory
neighbors and display a “dear enemy effect” by responding less
aggressively to neighbors than strangers, while male Kai rocket frogs (A.
kaiei) do not. Our results did not support the identity signaling
hypothesis: both species produced advertisement calls that contain similar
amounts of identity information. Our results did support the identity
reception hypothesis: both species exhibited habituation of aggression to
playbacks simulating the arrival of a new neighbor, but only golden rocket
frogs showed renewed aggression when they subsequently heard calls from a
different male. These results suggest that an ancestral mechanism of
plasticity in aggression common among frogs has been modified through
natural selection to be specific to calls of individual males in golden
rocket frogs, enabling a social recognition system.