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的军备竞赛。蝙蝠以复杂、高音的声纳开始了这场竞赛，它们用这种声纳在太空中跟踪昆虫。许多夜间活动的昆虫，包括飞蛾，都用声纳探测设备和耳朵的进化来对抗，这种设备提醒昆虫注意蝙蝠接近时的回声定位叫声。飞蛾采取躲避的行动，一场令人印象深刻的捕食者和猎物之间的特技飞行狗大战接踵而至。虎蛾(鳞翅目：角蛾科)为这场争斗增添了新的转折。虎蛾对蝙蝠的回应是由一对被称为鼓膜的胸部结构产生的一系列高频滴答声。最近的研究表明，虎蛾发出声音警告，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，飞蛾的味道很难吃。这项研究将集中在蝙蝠和飞蛾相互作用的额外复杂性上。首先是巴特式模拟生物的可能进化，即在缺乏化学防御的情况下，通过发出警告声音来欺骗系统的物种。第二个是穆勒模仿的进化，这种令人反感的发声物种通过发音相似来分担教育当地捕食者的负担。这些可能性将通过使用实验室饲养的天真红蝙蝠和虎蛾开发的新学习方法来测试，这些方法代表了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包括声学领域。这项研究还将调查某些飞蛾物种，即那些能产生异常复杂声音的物种，是否能像军用飞机干扰敌人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将解释蝙蝠-虎蛾进化的迷人细节，还将阐明基本的行为互动如何塑造了声学世界。除了在动物行为领域培训高质量的研究生和本科生外，这些实验的结果将通过与佛罗里达州中南部的阿奇博尔德生物站的合作项目与小学生分享。来自维克森林的本科生将担任在阿奇博尔德举行的夏季生态夏令营的联络人，夏令营将于3日、4日举行。第五名。评分员。本科生将以我们的蝙蝠蛾系统为例，向夏令营学员讲授假设检验。一个致力于蝙蝠和昆虫相互作用的网站已经开发出来，以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.