Frog Love Songs and the Sounds of Climate Change
by Kat Kerlin, UC Davis
February 12, 2026
When the time is right, a good love song can make all the difference.
A study from the University of California, Davis, found that temperature affects the sound and quality of male frogs’ mating calls. In the colder, early weeks of spring, their songs start off sluggishly. In warmer weather, their songs pick up the pace, and female frogs take note.
Better songs not only make the males more attractive mates, but they also suggest to females that environmental conditions are suitable for reproduction.
“The song of frogs really depends on the temperature of the environment,” said lead author Julianne Pekny, a UC Davis graduate student in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology when the study was conducted and currently director of conservation science with the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy in North Carolina. “As ponds warm, male frogs go from sounding slow and sluggish to faster and almost desperate. I can hear it with my human ears, and female frogs are also paying attention.”
Keep reading: https://www.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/frog-love-songs-and-sounds-climate-change
Read the Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.70031