Skowron Volponi Marta, Casacci Luca Pietro, Volponi Paolo, Barbero Francesca
Laboratory of Evolutionary Biology and Insect Ecology, Faculty of Biology, University of Bialystok, Ciołkowskiego 1J, 15-245, Białystok, Poland.
ClearWing Foundation for Biodiversity, Podczaszyńskiego 11/15 m 23A, 01-866, Warsaw, Poland.
Front Zool. 2021 Jul 7;18(1):35. doi: 10.1186/s12983-021-00419-8.
The endless struggle to survive has driven harmless species to evolve elaborate strategies of deceiving predators. Batesian mimicry involves imitations of noxious species' warning signals by palatable mimics. Clearwing moths (Lepidoptera: Sesiidae), incapable of inflicting painful bites or stings, resemble bees or wasps in their morphology and sometimes imitate their behaviours. An entirely unexplored type of deception in sesiids is acoustic mimicry. We recorded the buzzing sounds of two species of Southeast Asian clearwing moths, Heterosphecia pahangensis and H. hyaloptera and compared them to their visual model bee, Tetragonilla collina, and two control species of bees occurring in the same habitat. Recordings were performed on untethered, flying insects in nature.
Based on eight acoustic parameters and wingbeat frequencies calculated from slow-motion videos, we found that the buzzes produced by both clearwing moths highly resemble those of T. collina but differ from the two control species of bees.
Acoustic similarities to bees, alongside morphological and behavioural imitations, indicate that clearwing moths display multimodal mimicry of their evolutionary models.
为求生存的无尽斗争驱使无害物种演化出复杂的欺骗捕食者的策略。贝氏拟态涉及可食性模仿者对有害物种警告信号的模仿。透翅蛾（鳞翅目：透翅蛾科）无法造成刺痛或叮咬，它们在形态上与蜜蜂或黄蜂相似，有时还会模仿它们的行为。透翅蛾中一种完全未被探索的欺骗类型是声学拟态。我们记录了两种东南亚透翅蛾——彭亨异透翅蛾和透明异透翅蛾的嗡嗡声，并将它们与其视觉模型蜜蜂——四角准蜂，以及同一生境中的两种对照蜜蜂物种进行比较。记录是在自然环境中对自由飞行的昆虫进行的。
基于八个声学参数以及从慢动作视频中计算出的振翅频率，我们发现两种透翅蛾发出的嗡嗡声与四角准蜂的高度相似，但与两种对照蜜蜂物种不同。
与蜜蜂的声学相似性，以及形态和行为上的模仿，表明透翅蛾对其进化模型表现出多模态拟态。
