Jamming avoidance in electric fish and frogs: strategies of signal oscillator timing.
Repetitive spontaneous calling in frogs and electric signalling in pulse-type electric fishes are driven by neural pacemakers. Minimization of signal overlap between neighbors is achieved in frogs and certain electric fishes by mutual entrainment, requiring cycle-by-cycle adjustment of pacemaker interval. Other fishes, which require a regular electric organ discharge, are more constrained in their ability to avoid jamming. Entrainment may also serve to reciprocally place signals in a temporal 'blindspot' of the receiver, the period of elevated sensory threshold following signal production, to reduce aggressive interactions.
D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D001001:Anura / Q000502:physiology*; D001683:Biological Clocks; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D004555:Electric Fish / Q000502:physiology*; D004560:Electricity; D012679:Sense Organs / Q000502:physiology; D013016:Sound; D013045:Species Specificity