Department of Entomology, National Institute of Biology, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
J Exp Biol. 2010 Sep 15;213(Pt 18):3213-22. doi: 10.1242/jeb.044024.
Animals often communicate in environments with high levels of biotic noise that arises from the signals of other individuals. Although effects of background biotic noise on mate recognition and discrimination have been widely studied in air-born sound communication, little is known about incidental interference between signallers that use substrate-borne vibrational signals. In this study we investigated the ability of males of the southern green stink bug Nezara viridula (L.) (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae) to recognize conspecific female song in the presence of biotic noise originating from conspecific and heterospecific vibrational signals. We tested male responsiveness on a bean plant in playback experiments. One leaf was vibrated with conspecific female song, while to the other one we simultaneously applied either heterospecific female signal or various altered conspecific signals with different temporal parameters. We tested males in three levels of biotic noise, ranging from +6 dB to -6 dB and we compared male responsiveness in each treatment with response obtained in unilateral treatment with unaltered conspecific female calling song. Male responsiveness was reduced in the presence of heterospecific signals or when background noise from conspecific signals obscured the species-specific temporal pattern of conspecific female song. By contrast, the presence of two sources of conspecific female songs had a positive effect on male responsiveness, for as long as the signal repetition rate of perceived song did not differ from the species-specific value. In the presence of interfering background signals, searching activity was less affected than male signalling. Increased signal-to-noise ratio restored male responsiveness to the level expressed in unilateral stimulation with conspecific female song. The results are discussed with regard to male behavioural strategies for vibrational communication in a noisy environment.
动物经常在生物噪声水平较高的环境中进行交流，这些噪声是由其他个体的信号产生的。尽管背景生物噪声对空气传播声音通讯中的配偶识别和区分的影响已经得到了广泛的研究，但对于使用基于基质的振动信号的信号发送者之间偶然干扰的了解甚少。在这项研究中，我们研究了南方绿臭虫 Nezara viridula（L.）（半翅目：Pentatomidae）雄性在存在源自同种和异种振动信号的生物噪声的情况下识别同种雌性歌声的能力。我们在回放实验中在豆科植物上测试了雄性的反应能力。一片叶子受到同种雌性歌声的振动，而另一片叶子则同时施加了同种或不同时间参数的异性雌性信号或各种改变后的同种信号。我们在从+6 dB 到-6 dB 的三个生物噪声水平上测试了雄性，将每个处理中的雄性反应与单侧处理中未改变的同种雌性叫声获得的反应进行了比较。在存在异性信号或当同种信号的背景噪声掩盖了同种雌性歌声的特定时间模式时，雄性的反应能力会降低。相比之下，当存在两种同种雌性歌声源时，只要感知到的歌声的信号重复率与特定物种的值不同，对雄性反应能力就会产生积极影响。在存在干扰背景信号的情况下，搜索活动的影响小于雄性信号。增加信号噪声比可将雄性反应能力恢复到单侧刺激同种雌性歌声时的水平。这些结果与在嘈杂环境中雄性进行振动通讯的行为策略有关。
