Frogs with a southern drawl: Wide recognition space facilitates heterospecific aggression in territorial cricket frogs

Species recognition enables both females and males to make adaptive behavioral decisions in sympatric zones. Research on species recognition usually concentrates on how female mate choice prevents interspecies matings. Male-male competition also plays an important role in reproduction but is relatively understudied in the context of speciation. The present study investigates the aggressive thresholds for species recognition during male-male competition in northern and southern cricket frogs: two sympatric “sibling” species of frogs that are distinguishable based on advertisement calls. We conducted a field playback experiment that presented synthetic calls to male northern cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) that varied in temporal properties, spanning the range from conspecific to heterospecific call properties. Males responded aggressively to calls ranging from average conspecific calls to average heterospecific calls, notably excluding extreme heterospecific calls. We also modeled how op..., , # Data from: Frogs with a southern drawl: Wide recognition space facilitates heterospecific aggression in territorial cricket frogs

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83x8](10.5061/dryad.q2bvq83x8)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: Playback_response_data.csv

**Description:** This data set includes all behavioral data from 40 paired field playbacks conducted on 20 male northern cricket frogs (*Acris crepitans*) in the summer of 2023. All field playbacks were conducted in Lake Matoaka in Williamsburg, Virginia. These data represent visual observations from playback trials and acoustic measurements from recordings of calling behavior. *Note:* Any cells left blank are due to the infeasibility of getting the data (i.e., the focal male escaped before physical measurements could be taken, aquatic vegetation prevented sightlines, etc.), or the male not calling during that trial period.

##### Variables

* Recording: The unique file number of the...,