Overview
- The iScience study, which published Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, tested 60 mating female Cope’s gray treefrogs in a soundproof arena using recordings of real male calls.
- Researchers gave females two, four, or eight simultaneous call options and found choice accuracy fell from about 75–77% with two options to roughly 50% with four and 20–25% with eight.
- As options rose, females took longer to move toward a call and more often failed to choose at all, with decision times sometimes increasing by about 90 seconds and indecision rising from 3% to 17%.
- A control that added overlapping chorus noise did not change outcomes much, which points to cognitive choice overload from many discrete options rather than simple acoustic masking.
- The authors say these decision limits can raise short-term risks for females at mating ponds and help explain why males with shorter, less-preferred calls persist in populations over time.