Wake Forest study finds that moths mimic sounds to survive

[Jim Mason]

If you are a PNAS subscriber, you can get the paper here.

http://www.pnas.org/content/vol104/issue22/#ECOLOGY

Jim Mason, Naturalist
Jim at gpnc.org
Great Plains Nature Center
6232 E. 29th Street North
Wichita, KS 67220-2200
316-683-5499 x103 - voice
316-688-9555 - fax
www.gpnc.org


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Quinn" <entomike at gmail.com>
To: "Leps-L" <LEPS-L at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 10:41 AM
Subject: Wake Forest study finds that moths mimic sounds to survive


> Wake Forest University - Press Release
> 
> WFU study finds that moths mimic sounds to survive
> 
> May 29, 2007
> 
> In a night sky filled with hungry bats, good-tasting moths increase
> their chances of survival by mimicking the sounds of their bad-tasting
> cousins, according to a new Wake Forest University study.
> 
> To be published in the May 29 issue of the Proceedings of the National
> Academy of Sciences, the study is the first to definitively show how
> an animal species uses acoustic mimicry as a defensive strategy.
> 
> The research was conducted by Jesse Barber, a doctoral student in
> biology at Wake Forest.  William E. Conner, professor of biology at
> Wake Forest, co-authored the study.
> 
> In response to the sonar that bats use to locate prey, the tiger moths
> make ultrasonic clicks of their own.  They broadcast the clicks from a
> paired set of structures called "tymbals."  Many species of tiger moth
> use the tymbals to make specific sounds that warn the bat of their bad
> taste.  Other species make sounds that closely mimic those
> high-frequency sounds.
> 
> "We found that the bats do not eat the good-tasting moths that make
> the similar sounds," said Barber, who has worked on this research for
> four years.
> 
> In the study, other types of moths that were similar in size to the
> sound-emitting moths, but did not make sounds, were gobbled up by the
> bats.
> 
> The researcher trained free-flying bats to hunt moths in view of two
> high-speed infrared video cameras to record predator-prey interactions
> that occur in fractions of a second.  He also recorded the sounds
> emitted from each moth, as well as the sounds made by the bats.
> 
> All the bats quickly learned to avoid the noxious moths first offered
> to them, associating the warning sounds with bad taste.  They then
> avoided a second sound-producing species even though it was not
> chemically protected. This is similar to the way birds avoid
> butterflies that look like the bad-tasting Monarch.
> 
> The two species of bats used were big brown bats and red bats. Barber
> raised the bats in the lab so behavior learned in the wild would not
> influence the results of the experiment.
> 
> Barber said anecdotal observations have suggested that animals such as
> snakes, owls and bees use acoustic mimicry.  This study takes the next
> step and provides the definitive experimental evidence for how
> mimicking sounds helps an animal survive.
> 
> http://www.wfu.edu/news/release/2007.05.29.a.php
> 
> 
> Mike Quinn, Austin
> 
> 
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