Sound Strategies: Acoustic Mimicry and Jamming in the Bat-Moth Arms Race

食虫蝙蝠和它们的猎物之间的相互作用可以被认为是一场进化军备竞赛。蝙蝠进化出了复杂的、高音调的声纳，以此在太空中追踪昆虫，从而开始了这场竞赛。包括飞蛾在内的许多夜行昆虫都进化出了声纳探测装置——耳朵——来对抗蝙蝠，这种装置可以让昆虫对接近蝙蝠的回声定位叫声发出警报。飞蛾采取躲避行动，捕食者和猎物之间上演了一场令人印象深刻的特技狗斗。虎蛾（鳞翅目：虎蛾科）给这场争斗增添了新的变数。虎蛾回应蝙蝠时，会发出一系列高频的咔哒声，这些声音是由成对的胸廓结构——鼓膜发出的。最近的研究表明，虎蛾会发出一种声音警告，表明它们不是美味的食物，就像昆虫用鲜艳的颜色警告视觉捕食者它们是有毒的一样。蝙蝠很快就知道飞蛾的味道不好。这项研究将集中在蝙蝠与飞蛾相互作用的额外复杂性上。第一种可能是贝叶斯模仿者的进化，这些物种在没有化学防御的情况下通过发出警告声音来欺骗系统。第二种是穆勒氏模仿者的进化，这是一种发出令人讨厌的声音的物种，它们通过发出相似的声音来分担教育当地捕食者的负担。这些可能性将通过实验室培养的幼稚红蝙蝠和虎蛾开发的新学习方法进行测试，这些方法被选择来代表不同水平的声音产生和适口性。这项工作将把模仿的概念从经典的视觉信号扩展到声学领域。这项研究还将调查某些种类的飞蛾，它们发出非常复杂的声音，是否能像军用飞机干扰敌人的雷达一样干扰蝙蝠的声纳。蝙蝠蛾的故事塑造了动物行为领域，它是已知的最复杂的捕食者-猎物相互作用之一。对这些过程的理解不仅可以解释蝙蝠虎蛾进化的迷人细节，还可以说明基本的行为相互作用如何塑造了声学世界。除了在动物行为学领域培养高素质的研究生和本科生外，这些实验的结果还将通过与佛罗里达州中南部阿奇博尔德生物站的合作项目与小学生分享。维克森林大学的本科生将作为联络人参加在阿奇博尔德举行的3日、4日的夏季生态夏令营。和第五。年级的。本科生将以我们的蝙蝠蛾系统为例，向夏令营成员讲授假设检验。一个专门介绍蝙蝠和虫子相互作用的网站已经开发出来，利用这两种生物的内在吸引力来吸引孩子们探索行为、生态和进化。

The interactions of insectivorous bats and their prey can be thought of as an evolutionary arms race. Bats began the race with the evolution of sophisticated, high pitched sonar with which they track insects through space. Many nocturnal insects including moths countered with the evolution of sonar detection devices, ears, that alert insects to the echolocation cries of approaching bats. Moths take evasive action and an impressive aerobatic dog fight between predator and prey ensues. Tiger moths (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) have added a new twist to the fray. Tiger moths answer bats with a series of high frequency clicks produced by paired thoracic structures called tymbals. Recent research has shown tiger moths send out an acoustic warning that they are not palatable food items, much as insects use bright colors to warn visual predators that they are noxious. The bats quickly learn that clicking moths taste bad. This study will focus on additional complexities of the bat-moth interaction. The first is the possible evolution of Batesian mimics, species that cheat the system by producing warning sounds in the absence of chemical defenses to back them up. The second is the evolution of Mullerian mimics, distasteful sound-producing species that share in the burden of educating local predators by sounding alike. These possibilities will be tested using novel learning methods developed with lab-raised naive red bats and tiger moths chosen to represent different levels of sound production and palatability. This work will expand the current usage of the concept of mimicry from classic visual signals to include the acoustic realm. The study will also investigate whether certain moth species, those that produce extraordinarily complex sounds, can jam the sonar of bats much as military aircraft jam enemy radar. The bat-moth story has shaped the field of animal behavior and it is one of the most sophisticated predator-prey interactions known. An understanding of these processes will not only explain the fascinating details of bat-tiger moth evolution, it will also illustrate how fundamental behavioral interactions have shaped the acoustic world. In addition to the training of high quality graduate students and undergraduates in the field of animal behavior the results of these experiments will be shared with grade school children through a cooperative program with the Archbold Biological Station in south-central Florida. Undergraduates from Wake Forest will serve as liaisons to the summer ecology camp held at Archbold for 3rd, 4th. and 5th. graders. The undergraduates will teach hypothesis testing to the summer campers using our bat-moth system as an example. A website dedicated to the interactions of Bats and Bugs has been developed to take advantage of the intrinsic appeal of both types of organisms to entice children to explore behavior, ecology and evolution.