Every night during breeding season, the male túngara frog of Central America will stake out a performance patch in the local pond and spend unbroken hours broadcasting his splendor to the world.

The mud-brown frog is barely the size of a shelled pecan, but his call is large and dynamic, a long downward sweep that sounds remarkably like a phaser weapon on “Star Trek,” followed by a brief, twangy, harmonically dense chuck.

Unless, that is, a competing male starts calling nearby, in which case the first frog is likely to add two chucks to the tail of his sweep. And should his rival respond likewise, Male A will tack on three chucks.

Back and forth they go, call and raise, until the frogs hit their respiratory limit at six to seven rapid-fire chucks

The acoustic one-upfrogship is energetically draining and risks attracting predators like bats. Yet the male frogs have […]