Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Jul 3;9(4):20130161.
doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0161. Print 2013 Aug 23.

Hawkmoths produce anti-bat ultrasound

Jesse R Barber  1 , Akito Y Kawahara
Affiliations

Hawkmoths produce anti-bat ultrasound

Jesse R Barber et al. Biol Lett. .

Abstract

Bats and moths have been engaged in aerial warfare for nearly 65 Myr. This arms race has produced a suite of counter-adaptations in moths, including bat-detecting ears. One set of defensive strategies involves the active production of sound; tiger moths' ultrasonic replies to bat attack have been shown to startle bats, warn the predators of bad taste and jam their biosonar. Here, we report that hawkmoths in the Choerocampina produce entirely ultrasonic sounds in response to tactile stimulation and the playback of biosonar attack sequences. Males do so by grating modified scraper scales on the outer surface of the genital valves against the inner margin of the last abdominal tergum. Preliminary data indicate that females also produce ultrasound to touch and playback of echolocation attack, but they do so with an entirely different mechanism. The anti-bat function of these sounds is unknown but might include startling, cross-family acoustic mimicry, warning of unprofitability or physical defence and/or jamming of echolocation. Hawkmoths present a novel and tractable system to study both the function and evolution of anti-bat defences.

Keywords: Sphingidae; arms race; bat; echolocation; sphinx moth.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) A spectrogram of the anti-bat sound produced by Cechenena lineosa is depicted above a series of high-speed video frames (b) of the stridulatory apparatus completing a modulation cycle of the valves. (c) Lateral view of genital valve shows enlarged scales for ultrasound production. (d) A line drawing depicts the motion of the valve as it moves dorso-proximally when pulled inward and ventro-distally as it moves outward.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Theretra nessus responding to playback of a bat echolocation attack. Triangles indicate the timing of modulation cycles.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Yager DD. 1999. Structure, development, and evolution of insect auditory systems. Microsc. Res. Tech. 47, 380–400 (doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0029(19991215)47:6<380::AID-JEMT3>3.0.CO;2-P) - DOI - PubMed
    1. Miller LA, Surlykke A. 2001. How some insects detect and avoid being eaten by bats: tactics and countertactics of prey and predator. Bioscience 51, 570–581 (doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0570:HSIDAA]2.0.CO;2) - DOI
    1. Bates DL, Fenton MB. 1990. Aposematism or startle? Predators learn their responses to the defenses of prey. Can. J. Zool. 68, 49–52 (doi:10.1139/z90-009) - DOI
    1. Hristov IH, Conner WE. 2005. Sound strategy: acoustic aposematism in the bat–tiger moth arms race. Naturwissenschaften 92, 164–169 (doi:10.1007/s00114-005-0611-7) - DOI - PubMed
    1. Barber JR, Conner WE. 2007. Acoustic mimicry in a predator–prey interaction. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 9331–9334 (doi:10.1073/pnas.0703627104) - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types