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Convergent evolution of anti-bat sounds

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Abstract

Bats and their insect prey rely on acoustic sensing in predator prey encounters—echolocation in bats, tympanic hearing in moths. Some insects also emit sounds for bat defense. Here, we describe a previously unknown sound-producing organ in Geometrid moths—a prothoracic tymbal in the orange beggar moth (Eubaphe unicolor) that generates bursts of ultrasonic clicks in response to tactile stimulation and playback of a bat echolocation attack sequence. Using scanning electron microscopy and high-speed videography, we demonstrate that E. unicolor and phylogenetically distant tiger moths have evolved serially homologous thoracic tymbal organs with fundamentally similar functional morphology, a striking example of convergent evolution. We compared E. unicolor clicks to that of five sympatric tiger moths and found that 9 of 13 E. unicolor clicking parameters were within the range of sympatric tiger moths. Remaining differences may result from the small size of the E. unicolor tymbal. Four of the five sympatric clicking tiger moth species were unpalatable to bats (0–20 % eaten), whereas E. unicolor was palatable to bats (86 % eaten). Based on these results, we hypothesize that E. unicolor evolved tymbal organs that mimic the sounds produced by toxic tiger moths when attacked by echolocating bats.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the staff of the Southwestern Research Station for coordination of field research, and Nick Dowdy for field assistance. William Conner and Gerald Carter reviewed a former version of this manuscript. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation (Grant Number IOS-0951160), the American Museum of Natural History (Theodore Roosevelt Grant) and by an institutional training grant (UMD T32 DC-00046) from the National Institute of Deafness and Communicative Disorders of the National Institutes of Health. All research on vertebrates was approved by the Wake Forest University Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC #A09-094).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Biology-Psychology Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Aaron J. Corcoran

  2. Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 27106, USA

    Aaron J. Corcoran

  3. Center for Design Innovation, 301 N. Main St, Winston-Salem, NC, 27101, USA

    Nickolay I. Hristov

  4. Department of Life Sciences, Winston-Salem State University, 601 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Winston Salem, NC, 27110, USA

    Nickolay I. Hristov

Authors
  1. Aaron J. Corcoran
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  2. Nickolay I. Hristov
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Correspondence to Aaron J. Corcoran.

Electronic supplementary material

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Online Resource 1. High-speed video of the tymbal of the geometrid moth Eubaphe unicolor. Audio and video are slowed 30x. Image is shown with anterior toward the bottom of the image and dorsal toward the right of the image. Note the faintly visible striae on the posterior edge of the tymbal

Supplementary material 1 (MPG 2374 kb)

Online Resource 2. High-speed video of the tymbal of the arctiine moth Cycnia tenera. Audio and video are slowed 30x. Image is shown with anterior toward the top-left of the image and dorsal toward the top-right of the image. Note the faintly visible striae on the anterior edge of the tymbal

Supplementary material 2 (MPG 4158 kb)

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Corcoran, A.J., Hristov, N.I. Convergent evolution of anti-bat sounds. J Comp Physiol A 200, 811–821 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0924-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0924-0

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