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

捕食者面临着对猎物实施致命打击的压力。反过来，猎物面临着将捕食者从身体重要部位转移开的压力。为了做到这一点，一些动物进化出了一些特征，利用袭击者的感觉系统和其中的弱点，创造了感觉错觉--即捕食者感知和现实之间的差异。了解猎物如何操纵捕食者的感觉处理将揭示感觉系统的重要驱动原理和局限性。这组研究人员已经证明，蛾的尾巴通过产生一种声音错觉，将回声定位蝙蝠的攻击转移到这些可牺牲的附属物上。利用高速摄像机和超声波麦克风阵列，这项研究将量化蝙蝠和长尾蛾之间的战斗，并揭示这种错觉的潜在机制。为了对他们的假说提供自然复制的测试，该团队将研究不同大陆上飞蛾的长尾的多个来源，并将这一知识纳入全面的系统发展史。在这样做的过程中，他们将分析约束和选择在趋同特征出现方面的作用，以揭示管理多样化的一般原则。该小组将开展活动，以扩大其工作的影响。例如，他们将从现场直播视频会议进入本科生课堂，利用蝙蝠和飞蛾互动的自然魅力来刺激学生，提高STEM留存率。此外，该团队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，以及显示蝙蝠和飞蛾相互作用的高速视频的多台计算机显示器。适应于绕过捕食者感知策略的策略很可能在不同的类群中被低估了防御。该项目将确定蝙蝠被飞蛾尾巴攻击的偏转机制。该团队将使用蝙蝠和飞蛾相互作用的3D高速视频，通过精确量化蝙蝠攻击猎物的位置来解析机械假说。此外，他们将使用3D融合阵列来量化蝙蝠在返回飞蛾回声时可用的物理信息，然后在捕食者与猎物的战斗中让这些飞蛾与蝙蝠对抗，以检查捕食者形成的听觉对象。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，该团队旨在测试回声轮廓收敛的进化路线。他们将量化来自世界热带数百种蚕蛾物种的回声，并建立一个强大的系统发育图，以揭示趋同进化的模式，并梳理出历史偏见和选择在这种反蝙蝠防御的独立起源上的作用。了解飞蛾尾巴如何改变回声信息以“愚弄”蝙蝠，将揭示主动传感系统的局限性，该系统经过数百万年与昆虫对抗防御的磨练，并可能导致对从回声流中提取信息的根本局限性的理解。此外，该项目对各种夜间昆虫的进化具有广泛的影响，夜间昆虫是地球上的主要动物谱系之一。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智力优势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.