Why These Frogs Make ‘the Grossest Blunder in Sexual Preference’
When rain falls and water is plentiful, the sex lives of plains spadefoot toads are pretty, well, plain. Females prowl ponds for the suitor with the most winsome call; they pair off to couple, churning out legions of eggs that will hatch into, as genetics might predict, more plains spadefoot toads.
But when the weather gets drier and deep ponds more scant, as they often do in the North American deserts where spadefoots live, this narrative acquires a twist. Female plains spadefoot toads start seeking out not the duckish quacks of their own species but the baritone trills of the spadefoot toad. Atop the parched landscape, these odd couples mingle, yielding mixed-breed offspring that turn out stunted in some quite serious ways: Males are sterile, and females produce far fewer eggs. It’s a fate that most animals would take
