Mhatre Natasha, Balakrishnan Rohini
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India.
J Exp Biol. 2007 Oct;210(Pt 20):3661-76. doi: 10.1242/jeb.003764.
Field cricket females localize one of many singing males in the field in closed-loop multi-source conditions. To understand this behaviour, field cricket phonotaxis was investigated in a closed-loop walking phonotaxis paradigm, in response to two simultaneously active speakers playing aphasic calling songs. Female phonotactic paths were oriented towards the louder sound sources, but showed great inter-individual variability. Decisions made in the initial phases were correlated with the overall directions of the paths. Interestingly, the sound pressure levels of stimuli did not greatly influence several features of phonotactic paths such as sinuosity, walking bout lengths and durations. In order to ascertain the extent of our understanding of walking phonotaxis, a stochastic model was used to simulate the behaviour observed in the experiment. The model incorporated data from the experiment and our current understanding of field cricket auditory physiology. This model, based on stochastic turning towards the louder side, successfully recaptured several qualitative and quantitative features of the observed phonotactic paths. The simulation also reproduced the paths observed in a separate outdoor field experiment. Virtual crickets that were unilaterally deafened or had poor ear directionality exhibited walking paths similar to those observed in previous experiments.
在闭环多源条件下，雌性田蟋蟀能在田野中众多鸣叫的雄性中定位其中一只。为了解这种行为，在闭环行走趋声性范式中研究了田蟋蟀的趋声性，该范式中两只同时发声的扬声器播放失序的求偶鸣叫歌曲。雌性的趋声路径朝向声音更大的声源，但个体间差异很大。初始阶段做出的决策与路径的总体方向相关。有趣的是，刺激的声压级对趋声路径的几个特征，如曲折度、行走周期长度和持续时间，影响不大。为了确定我们对行走趋声性的理解程度，使用了一个随机模型来模拟实验中观察到的行为。该模型纳入了实验数据以及我们目前对田蟋蟀听觉生理学的理解。这个基于向声音更大一侧随机转向的模型成功地重现了观察到的趋声路径的几个定性和定量特征。模拟还重现了在另一个户外实地实验中观察到的路径。单侧失聪或耳朵方向性差的虚拟蟋蟀表现出与先前实验中观察到的相似的行走路径。
