Call characteristics of five Kurixalus species (Amphibia, Anura, Rhacophoridae)

Species-specific acoustic signals are considered a prezygotic isolation mechanism, and comparative bioacoustical analyses of animal vocalizations facilitate species identification. In the present study, we described and compared the acoustic characteristics of Kurixalus hainanus, K. odontotarsus, K. lenquanensis, K. qionglaiensis and K. idiootocus. A characteristic spectrogram and oscillogram are presented for each species, together with information about the spectral and temporal characteristics of the calls. We found that the calls of each species comprised three note types, and there were significant differences in the acoustic characteristics of the three note types. There were also significant interspecific differences in the dominant frequency, note duration, call duration, mean number of notes, and proportion of notes for each note type. In addition, the five species differed in body mass, snout-vent length and head width. The factors influencing the differences in vocalizations among the five Kurixalus species require further study. We provided the dominant frequency, note duration, inter-note intervals, call duration and mean number of notes (MN) of three call types of these species, and discussed the interspecific variation in calls, aiming to inform future ecological studies of the species and taxonomic studies in the genus Kurixalus.