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Computational principles underlying recognition of acoustic signals in grasshoppers and crickets

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Abstract

Grasshoppers and crickets independently evolved hearing organs and acoustic communication. They differ considerably in the organization of their auditory pathways, and the complexity of their songs, which are essential for mate attraction. Recent approaches aimed at describing the behavioral preference functions of females in both taxa by a simple modeling framework. The basic structure of the model consists of three processing steps: (1) feature extraction with a bank of ‘LN models’—each containing a linear filter followed by a nonlinearity, (2) temporal integration, and (3) linear combination. The specific properties of the filters and nonlinearities were determined using a genetic learning algorithm trained on a large set of different song features and the corresponding behavioral response scores. The model showed an excellent prediction of the behavioral responses to the tested songs. Most remarkably, in both taxa the genetic algorithm found Gabor-like functions as the optimal filter shapes. By slight modifications of Gabor filters several types of preference functions could be modeled, which are observed in different cricket species. Furthermore, this model was able to explain several so far enigmatic results in grasshoppers. The computational approach offered a remarkably simple framework that can account for phenotypically rather different preference functions across several taxa.

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Acknowledgments

We thank many members of the Behavioral Physiology lab for sharing their behavioral data, in particular Stefanie Krämer, Olaf Kutzki, and Jana Sträter. This work was funded by grants to BR from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (01GQ0410, 01GQ1001A), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB618 grants to BR and RMH; Ro 547/12-1; GK1589/1 grant to JC) and the German Academic Exchange Service (JC).

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  1. Jan Clemens

    Present address: Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

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  1. Department of Biology, Behavioral Physiology Group, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099, Berlin, Germany

    Bernhard Ronacher, R. Matthias Hennig & Jan Clemens

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Ronacher, B., Hennig, R.M. & Clemens, J. Computational principles underlying recognition of acoustic signals in grasshoppers and crickets. J Comp Physiol A 201, 61–71 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0946-7

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