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How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs?

Insects have evolved a variety of structures and mechanisms to produce sounds, which are used for communication both within and between species. Among acoustic insects, cicada males are particularly known for their loud and diverse sounds which function importantly in communication. The main method...

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Autores principales: Luo, Changqing, Wei, Cong, Nansen, Christian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25714608
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118554
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author Luo, Changqing
Wei, Cong
Nansen, Christian
author_facet Luo, Changqing
Wei, Cong
Nansen, Christian
author_sort Luo, Changqing
collection PubMed
description Insects have evolved a variety of structures and mechanisms to produce sounds, which are used for communication both within and between species. Among acoustic insects, cicada males are particularly known for their loud and diverse sounds which function importantly in communication. The main method of sound production in cicadas is the tymbal mechanism, and a relative small number of cicada species possess both tymbal and stridulatory organs. However, cicadas of the genus Karenia do not have any specialized sound-producing structures, so they are referred to as “mute”. This denomination is quite misleading, as they indeed produce sounds. Here, we investigate the sound-producing mechanism and acoustic communication of the “mute” cicada, Karenia caelatata, and discover a new sound-production mechanism for cicadas: i.e., K. caelatata produces impact sounds by banging the forewing costa against the operculum. The temporal, frequency and amplitude characteristics of the impact sounds are described. Morphological studies and reflectance-based analyses reveal that the structures involved in sound production of K. caelatata (i.e., forewing, operculum, cruciform elevation, and wing-holding groove on scutellum) are all morphologically modified. Acoustic playback experiments and behavioral observations suggest that the impact sounds of K. caelatata are used in intraspecific communication and function as calling songs. The new sound-production mechanism expands our knowledge on the diversity of acoustic signaling behavior in cicadas and further underscores the need for more bioacoustic studies on cicadas which lack tymbal mechanism.
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spelling pubmed-43409552015-03-04 How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs? Luo, Changqing Wei, Cong Nansen, Christian PLoS One Research Article Insects have evolved a variety of structures and mechanisms to produce sounds, which are used for communication both within and between species. Among acoustic insects, cicada males are particularly known for their loud and diverse sounds which function importantly in communication. The main method of sound production in cicadas is the tymbal mechanism, and a relative small number of cicada species possess both tymbal and stridulatory organs. However, cicadas of the genus Karenia do not have any specialized sound-producing structures, so they are referred to as “mute”. This denomination is quite misleading, as they indeed produce sounds. Here, we investigate the sound-producing mechanism and acoustic communication of the “mute” cicada, Karenia caelatata, and discover a new sound-production mechanism for cicadas: i.e., K. caelatata produces impact sounds by banging the forewing costa against the operculum. The temporal, frequency and amplitude characteristics of the impact sounds are described. Morphological studies and reflectance-based analyses reveal that the structures involved in sound production of K. caelatata (i.e., forewing, operculum, cruciform elevation, and wing-holding groove on scutellum) are all morphologically modified. Acoustic playback experiments and behavioral observations suggest that the impact sounds of K. caelatata are used in intraspecific communication and function as calling songs. The new sound-production mechanism expands our knowledge on the diversity of acoustic signaling behavior in cicadas and further underscores the need for more bioacoustic studies on cicadas which lack tymbal mechanism. Public Library of Science 2015-02-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4340955/ /pubmed/25714608 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118554 Text en © 2015 Luo et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Luo, Changqing
Wei, Cong
Nansen, Christian
How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs?
title How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs?
title_full How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs?
title_fullStr How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs?
title_full_unstemmed How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs?
title_short How Do “Mute” Cicadas Produce Their Calling Songs?
title_sort how do “mute” cicadas produce their calling songs?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25714608
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118554
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