Abstract
Male cockroaches of the species Elliptorhina chopardi expel air through a pair of modified abdominal spiracles during courtship. This air expulsion simultaneously produces air and substrate-borne vibrations. We described and compared in details these two types of vibrations. Our analysis of the air-borne signals shows that males can produce three categories of signals with distinct temporal and frequency parameters. “Pure whistles” consist of two independent harmonic series fast frequency modulated with independent harmonics that can cross each other. “Noisy whistles” also possess two independent voices but include a noisy broad-band frequency part in the middle. Hiss sounds are more noise-like, being made of a broad-band frequency spectrum. All three call types are unusually high in dominant frequency (>5 kHz) for cockroaches. The substrate-borne signals are categorised similarly. Some harmonics of the substrate-borne signals were filtered out, however, making the acoustic energy centered on fewer frequency bands. Our analysis shows that cockroach signals are complex, with fast frequency modulations and two distinct voices. These results also readdress the question of what system could potentially receive and decode the information contained within such complex sounds.
References
Aubin T, Jouventin P, Hildebrand C (2000) Penguins use the two voice system to recognize each other. Proc R Soc Lond B 267:1081–1087
Bradbury JW, Vehrencamp SL (1998) Principles of animal communication. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts
Clark DC, Moore AJ (1995) Variation and repeatability of male agonistic hiss characteristics and their relationship to social rank in Gromphadorhina portentosa. Anim Behav 50:719–729
Čokl A, Virant-Doberlet M (1997) Tuning of tibial organ receptor cells in Periplaneta americana L. J Exp Zool 278:395–404
Fraser J, Nelson MC (1982) Frequency modulated courtship song in a cockroach. Anim Behav 30:627–628
Fraser J, Nelson MC (1984) Communication in the courtship of a Madagascan hissing cockroach. I. Normal courtship. Anim Behav 32:194–203
Guthrie DM (1966) Sound production and reception in a cockroach. J Exp Biol 45:321–328
Holy TE, Guo Z (2005) Ultrasonic songs of male mice. PLoS Biol 3:e386
Khanna H, Gaunt LL, McCallum DA (1997) Digital spectrographic cross-correlation: tests of sensitivity. Bioacoustics 7:209–234
Nelson MC (1979) Sound production in the cockroach Gromphadorhina portentosa: the sound-producing apparatus. J Comp Physiol A 132:27–38
Nelson MC, Fraser J (1980) Sound production in the cockroach, Gromphadorhina portentosa: evidence for communication by hissing. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 6:305–314
Robert D, Göpfert MC (2002) Acoustic sensitivity of fly antennae. J Insect Physiol 48:189–196
Roth LM, Hartman B (1967) Sound production and its evolutionary significance in the Blattaria. Ann Entomol Soc Am 60:740–752
Shaw SR (1994) Detection of airborne sound by a cockroach vibration detector: a possible missing link in insect auditory evolution. J Exp Biol 193:13–47
Specht R (2004) AVISOFT-SAS Lab Pro. Avisoft, Berlin
Sueur J, Aubin T, Simonis-Sueur C (2006) Seewave. Université Paris XI-MNHN, Paris
Suthers RA (1990) Contributions to birdsong from the left and right sides of the intact syrinx. Nature 347:473–477
Yager DD (2005) Cockroach homologs of Praying Mantis peripheral auditory system components. J Morph 265:120–139
Acknowledgements
We thank Gérard Dutrilleux for maintaining the electronic recording system, Julie Chébaux for data acquisition, Anne Cherpin for the advice in rearing cockroaches, Christine Marlet for taking care of insects, Meta Virant-Doberlet and Elizabeth Tuck for critical reading of the manuscripts. We gratefully acknowledge Knowles Company for providing miniature accelerometers. We thank Charlie Henry and four other reviewers for their helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sueur, J., Aubin, T. When males whistle at females: complex FM acoustic signals in cockroaches. Naturwissenschaften 93, 500–505 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-006-0135-9
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-006-0135-9