Cultural learning of predator recognition in mixed-species assemblages of frogs: the effect of tutor-to-observer ratio

Animals that live in social groups have the opportunity to acquire information about foraging opportunities, mates and predators. Traditionally, social learning has been studied in birds and mammals, but few tests have been conducted on less social taxa such as amphibians. Moreover, few studies have considered cross-species learning among members of mixed-species assemblages. We examined social learning in tadpoles of the boreal chorus frog, Pseudacris maculata, and found that they do not display a fright response to the odour of predacious tiger salamanders, Ambystoma tigrinum, without prior experience with salamanders, but they can learn to recognize the salamanders when they are paired with predator-experienced woodfrog, Rana sylvatica, tadpoles. Moreover, the efficacy of learning is enhanced when the ratio of tutors-to-observers increases. Social learning has far-reaching implications for survival of individuals in mixed-species assemblages. (c) 2008 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.