COURIER-MAIL (Melbourne, Australia) 28 September 07 Grunts turn off cane toads (Mark Schliebs)
Male cane toads are more attracted to louder mating calls than their female counterparts - but each sex prefers the other to be quieter, a study has found.
A James Cook University study into trapping cane toads found that using recordings of the pest’s mating calls at the right volume was three times more effective than normal trapping techniques.
Researchers Lin Schwarzkopf and Ross Alford compared the use of the recordings with traditional trapping techniques, which include using insects to lure the toads.
Their report, published in the CSIRO’s Wildlife Research journal, said that trapping programs could utilise mating calls for greater success.
“Existing cane toad trap designs use lights to lure insects into to traps, and toads enter the traps to feed,” the researchers said in the article.
“Using a large, outdoor experiment arena and playback of cane toad mating calls, we examined the possibility that cane toads… are attracted to mating vocalisations.
“We found that both male and female toads were attracted to quiet playbacks, whereas only males responded to loud playbacks.”
The report said that number of toads trapped using the recording was triple the amount captured without the mating calls.
But the authors also said that the number of toads trapped during the study was quite low.
“Although the traps did catch toads, the number trapped compared with toad abundance in the area was small… (with) only 87 toads (captured) in 292 trap nights.”
Grunts turn off cane toads