Boise State University, Boise, ID 83725, USA.
The McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Sci Adv. 2018 Jul 4;4(7):eaar7428. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aar7428. eCollection 2018 Jul.
Prey transmit sensory illusions to redirect predatory strikes, creating a discrepancy between what a predator perceives and reality. We use the acoustic arms race between bats and moths to investigate the evolution and function of a sensory illusion. The spinning hindwing tails of silk moths (Saturniidae) divert bat attack by reflecting sonar to create a misleading echoic target. We characterized geometric morphometrics of moth hindwings across silk moths, mapped these traits onto a new, robust phylogeny, and found that elaborated hindwing structures have converged on four adaptive shape peaks. To test the mechanism underlying these anti-bat traits, we pit bats against three species of silk moths with experimentally altered hindwings that created a representative gradient of ancestral and extant hindwing shapes. High-speed videography of battles reveals that moths with longer hindwings and tails more successfully divert bat attack. We postulate that sensory illusions are widespread and are underappreciated drivers of diversity across systems.
猎物会传递感觉幻觉来改变捕食者的攻击方向，从而造成捕食者感知和现实之间的差异。我们利用蝙蝠和飞蛾之间的声纳军备竞赛来研究感觉幻觉的进化和功能。丝蛾（Saturniidae）的旋转后翅尾会通过反射声纳来误导蝙蝠的攻击，从而产生一个误导性的回声目标。我们对丝蛾的后翅进行了几何形态测量，将这些特征映射到一个新的、强大的系统发育树上，并发现精心设计的后翅结构已经汇聚到四个适应性形状峰上。为了测试这些抗蝙蝠特征的机制，我们让蝙蝠与三种经过实验改变后翅的丝蛾进行对抗，这些丝蛾的后翅形状代表了祖先和现存的后翅形状的梯度。对战斗的高速录像显示，后翅和尾部长的飞蛾更成功地转移了蝙蝠的攻击。我们假设感觉幻觉是广泛存在的，并且是跨系统多样性的一个被低估的驱动因素。
