Collaborative Research: Acoustic Deflection in Bat-Moth Interactions: Revealing the Mechanism and Evolution of a Sensory Illusion

掠食者在压力下对猎物进行致命打击。反过来，猎物也面临着将捕食者从重要身体部位引开的压力。为了做到这一点，一些动物进化出了一些特征，利用攻击者的感官系统和其中的弱点，制造感官错觉——也就是说，捕食者的感知与现实之间存在差异。了解猎物如何操纵捕食者的感觉处理将揭示重要的驱动原理和感觉系统的局限性。这组研究人员已经证明，飞蛾的尾巴通过制造一种声错觉，将回声定位蝙蝠的攻击转移到这些可消耗的附属物上。利用高速摄像机阵列和超声波麦克风，这项研究将量化蝙蝠和长尾飞蛾之间的战斗，并揭示这种错觉的潜在机制。为了对他们的假设进行自然重复的测试，研究小组将研究不同大陆飞蛾长尾巴的多种起源，并将这些知识纳入一个全面的系统发育。在此过程中，他们将分析约束和选择在趋同特征出现中的作用，以揭示支配多样化的一般原则。该小组将参与扩大其工作影响的活动。例如，他们将从现场直播视频会议到本科教室，利用蝙蝠蛾互动的自然魅力来激发学生，提高STEM的保留率。此外，研究小组还将制作一个博物馆展览，其中将包括数百个飞蛾标本，由此产生的系统发育的再现，以及多台电脑显示器，显示蝙蝠与飞蛾相互作用的高速视频。在不同的分类群中，规避捕食者感知策略的策略可能被低估了。该项目将确定飞蛾尾巴偏转蝙蝠攻击的机制。该团队将使用蝙蝠与飞蛾相互作用的3D高速摄像技术，通过精确量化蝙蝠袭击猎物的位置，来解析机理假设。此外，他们将使用3D共振阵列量化飞蛾返回的回声中可获得的物理信息，然后将这些飞蛾与蝙蝠在捕食者-猎物战斗中进行比较，以检查捕食者听觉对象的形成。蝙蝠如何组织和分离听觉场景的基本原理与蝙蝠和昆虫的生态和进化密切相关。通过量化蚕蛾多样性的行为，研究小组旨在测试回声剖面收敛的进化路线。他们将量化世界各地热带地区数百种蚕蛾的回声，并建立一个健全的系统发育，以揭示趋同进化的模式，并梳理历史偏见和选择在这种抗蝙蝠防御的独立起源中的作用。了解飞蛾尾巴如何改变回声信息来“愚弄”蝙蝠，将揭示主动感知系统的局限性，这种系统已经与昆虫的对抗防御进行了数百万年的磨练，并可能导致对从回声流中提取信息的基本局限性的理解。此外，这个项目对地球上主要动物谱系之一的各种夜行昆虫的进化具有广泛的意义。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Predators are under pressure to perform lethal strikes on prey. Prey, in turn, are under pressure to deflect predators away from vital body parts. To do so, some animals have evolved traits to take advantage of their assailants' sensory systems and vulnerabilities therein, creating sensory illusions - that is, discrepancies between what the predator perceives and reality. Understanding how prey manipulate sensory processing by their predators will reveal important driving principles and limitations of sensory systems. This team of researchers has shown that moth tails divert echolocating bat attack to these expendable appendages by creating an acoustic illusion. Using arrays of high-speed cameras and ultrasonic microphones, this research will quantify battles between bats and long-tailed moths and reveal the underlying mechanism of this illusion. To provide naturally replicated tests of their hypotheses, the team will study multiple origins of long tails in moths on different continents and incorporate this knowledge into a comprehensive phylogeny. In doing so, they will parse the roles of both constraint and selection on the emergence of convergent traits to reveal general principles that govern diversification. The team will engage in activities to broaden the impact of their work. For example, they will live videoconference from the field into undergraduate classrooms to use the natural charisma of bat-moth interactions to excite students and increase STEM retention. In addition, the team will produce a museum exhibit that will include hundreds of moth specimens, a rendition of the resulting phylogeny and multiple computer monitors displaying high-speed videos of bat-moth interactions. Tactics adapted to circumvent the sensing strategies of predators are likely underappreciated defenses in diverse taxa. This project will determine the mechanism underlying deflection of bat attack by moth tails. The team will use 3D high-speed videography of bat-moth interactions to parse mechanistic hypotheses by quantifying precisely where bats strike their prey. In addition, they will quantify the physical information available to bats in returning echoes from moths using a 3D ensonification array and then pit those moths against bats in predator-prey battles to examine auditory object formation by the predator. The fundamentals of how bats organize and separate the auditory scene bear strongly on bat and insect ecology and evolution. By quantifying behavior across silk moth diversity, the team aims to test the evolutionary route of echoic profile convergence. They will quantify echoes reflected off hundreds of silk moth species across the world's tropics and build a robust phylogeny to unfold the pattern of convergent evolution and tease apart the roles of both historical bias and selection on the independent origins of this anti-bat defense. Understanding how moth tails alter echoic information to "fool" bats will reveal the limitations of an active sensing system that has been honed by millions of years of battling insect counter-defenses and may lead to an understanding of the fundamental limitations of extracting information from an echo stream. Further, this project has broad implications for the evolution of the diverse nocturnal insects, one of the dominant animal lineages on Earth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.