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Hearing diversity in moths confronting a neotropical bat assemblage

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Abstract

The tympanal ear is an evolutionary acquisition which helps moths survive predation from bats. The greater diversity of bats and echolocation strategies in the Neotropics compared with temperate zones would be expected to impose different sensory requirements on the neotropical moths. However, even given some variability among moth assemblages, the frequencies of best hearing of moths from different climate zones studied to date have been roughly the same: between 20 and 60 kHz. We have analyzed the auditory characteristics of tympanate moths from Cuba, a neotropical island with high levels of bat diversity and a high incidence of echolocation frequencies above those commonly at the upper limit of moths’ hearing sensitivity. Moths of the superfamilies Noctuoidea, Geometroidea and Pyraloidea were examined. Audiograms were determined by non-invasively measuring distortion-product otoacoustic emissions. We also quantified the frequency spectrum of the echolocation sounds to which this moth community is exposed. The hearing ranges of moths in our study showed best frequencies between 36 and 94 kHz. High sensitivity to frequencies above 50 kHz suggests that the auditory sensitivity of moths is suited to the sounds used by sympatric echolocating bat fauna. Biodiversity characterizes predators and prey in the Neotropics, but the bat–moth acoustic interaction keeps spectrally matched.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the students at the Faculty of Biology for their assistance collecting moths. Identification of the moths would not have been possible without the expert help of Rayner Nuñez and Alejandro Barro. Frank Macias-Escriva provided software for data processing and a valuable logistical support. Special thanks to A. Grinnell for his help with the revision of the manuscript. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

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  1. Ariadna Cobo-Cuan

    Present address: Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of California Los Angeles, 612 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group in Bioacoustics and Neuroethology, Faculty of Biology, University of Havana, 25 St. 455, Vedado, 10400, Havana, Cuba

    Ariadna Cobo-Cuan & Emanuel C. Mora

  2. Institut für Zellbiologie und Neurowissenschaft, J.W. Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Max von Laue Strasse 13, 60438, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany

    Manfred Kössl

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  1. Ariadna Cobo-Cuan
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Correspondence to Ariadna Cobo-Cuan.

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Cobo-Cuan, A., Kössl, M. & Mora, E.C. Hearing diversity in moths confronting a neotropical bat assemblage. J Comp Physiol A 203, 707–715 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-017-1170-z

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