McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida , Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Department of Biology, University of Florida , Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Biol Lett. 2024 May;20(5):20230610. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2023.0610. Epub 2024 May 15.
Echolocating bats and their eared insect prey are in an acoustic evolutionary war. Moths produce anti-bat sounds that startle bat predators, signal noxiousness, mimic unpalatable models and jam bat sonar. Tiger beetles (Cicindelidae) also purportedly produce ultrasound in response to bat attacks. Here we tested 19 tiger beetle species from seven genera and showed that they produce anti-bat signals to playback of authentic bat echolocation. The dominant frequency of beetle sounds substantially overlaps the sonar calls of sympatric bats. As tiger beetles are known to produce defensive chemicals such as benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, we hypothesized that tiger beetle sounds are acoustically advertising their unpalatability. We presented captive big brown bats () with seven different tiger beetle species and found that 90 out of 94 beetles were completely consumed, indicating that these tiger beetle species are not aposematically signalling. Instead, we show that the primary temporal and spectral characteristics of beetle warning sounds overlap with sympatric unpalatable tiger moth (Arctinae) sounds and that tiger beetles are probably Batesian mimics of noxious moth models. We predict that many insect taxa produce anti-bat sounds and that the acoustic mimicry rings of the night sky are hyperdiverse.
回声定位蝙蝠及其有耳昆虫猎物处于声学进化战争中。飞蛾会发出令蝙蝠捕食者感到惊讶的声音，表明其有害，模拟难吃的模型并干扰蝙蝠声纳。据说虎甲虫（ Cicindelidae ）也会对蝙蝠的攻击产生超声波。在这里，我们测试了来自七个属的 19 种虎甲虫，发现它们会对真实蝙蝠回声定位的回放产生抗蝙蝠信号。甲虫声音的主频与同域蝙蝠的声纳呼叫有很大的重叠。由于已知虎甲虫会产生苯甲醛和氢氰酸等防御性化学物质，我们假设虎甲虫的声音在声学上表明它们的不可口。我们向 94 只被俘获的大褐蝙蝠提供了七种不同的虎甲虫物种，发现 90 只甲虫被完全吃掉，这表明这些虎甲虫物种不是警戒信号。相反，我们表明，甲虫警告声音的主要时间和频谱特征与同域难吃的虎蛾（ Arctinae ）声音重叠，并且虎甲虫可能是有害蛾模型的贝氏拟态。我们预测许多昆虫类群都会发出抗蝙蝠的声音，并且夜空的声音模拟环具有高度多样性。
