An explosive clicking sound coming back out of the night might startle a bat just a split-second long enough for the moth to get away. Jamming isn’t the only possible explanation for moth noises, he said. As Conner puts it, “Why would you do that to a bigger, more dangerous predator that’s going to eat you?” As other moth species silently flee when they hear the sonar pings of an incoming bat, tiger moths generally click back. Tiger moths, a group of some 11,000 species, have been intriguing candidates because they present a puzzle in battlefield behavior. “There was some tantalizing neurophysiological work.” But to collect behavioral evidence to demonstrate jamming, he said, takes the right moth. “This is warfare … The first counter-adaptation is that the insects developed ears.”īiologists have debated the possibility that moths could also evolve sounds that sabotage bat sonar. Insect-hunting bats and their moth prey have become a classic in the study of evolutionary arms races, Conner says. Conference attendee David Yager of the University of Maryland in College Park says Conner’s experimental paradigm is “very strong, and I do think he has documented jamming by a species of moth.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |