Calling All the Ladies is Also Calling the Killers, for this Frog At Least

Túngara frogs and flies likely have been interacting since the early Cretaceous period, more than 100 million years ago. Frogs and the flies that bite them originated in the same part of the world and have evolved together as they spread around the globe.

In these frogs, disease, predation, and communication are intricately intertwined. Midges, which find their way to frogs by “intercepting” their mating calls, transmit parasites. Male frogs need to call to attract females, but in an ultimate catch-22, this also alerts predators of their whereabouts.

Ximena Bernal, an associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue University, has been studying this relationship for most of her professional life. She refers to the main line of her research as “eavesdropping.”

“We study how frogs communicate with one another, but also how their predators eavesdrop and exploit those systems,” she says. “The irony is that a lot of times the calls that female frogs prefer, bats and flies prefer too. The poor males just can’t win.”

The foundation of Bernal’s studies of these frogs and midges, also has helped develop novel trapping techniques to capture mosquitoes that are vectors of disease to humans.