Department of Mechanical Engineering, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902.
Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Apr 5;119(14):e2122789119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2122789119. Epub 2022 Mar 29.
SignificanceThe sense of hearing in all known animals relies on possessing auditory organs that are made up of cellular tissues and constrained by body sizes. We show that hearing in the orb-weaving spider is functionally outsourced to its extended phenotype, the proteinaceous self-manufactured web, and hence processes behavioral controllability. This finding opens new perspectives on animal extended cognition and hearing-the outsourcing and supersizing of auditory function in spiders. This study calls for reinvestigation of the remarkable evolutionary ecology and sensory ecology in spiders-one of the oldest land animals. The sensory modality of outsourced hearing provides a unique model for studying extended and regenerative sensing and presents new design features for inspiring novel acoustic flow detectors.
意义 在所有已知动物中，听觉依赖于拥有由细胞组织构成并受体型限制的听觉器官。我们表明，结网蜘蛛的听觉功能被外包给了它的扩展表型，即蛋白质自我制造的蛛网，从而实现了行为可控性。这一发现为动物的延伸认知和听觉——蜘蛛的听觉功能外包和超大型化——开辟了新的视角。这项研究呼吁重新研究蜘蛛这种最古老的陆地动物的显著进化生态学和感觉生态学。外包听觉的感觉方式为研究延伸和再生感觉提供了一个独特的模型，并为启发新型声流探测器提供了新的设计特点。
