Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The long-term goal of my research program is to characterize how sensory systems evolve with behaviour, allowing animals to effectively avoid predators, find mates, and communicate with conspecifics. Bats and insects are ideal animals for addressing this goal. Bats use echolocation to find insect prey, and many insects have ultrasound-sensitive ears to detect echolocation calls and initiate evasive flight. The short interaction times between bats and insects preclude the use of visual and chemical cues, providing a study system in which all information about both predator and prey is restricted to the sensory modality of sound. Bats and many insects also use acoustic signals for communication, such as males calling to attract mates. I have three short-term research objectives aimed at understanding how auditory systems co-evolve with acoustic behaviour. First, I will investigate sensory mechanisms for detecting and avoiding different predators with similar cues. My students and I will test the hypotheses that a) the tuning of moth ears allows them to initiate evasive flight at an effective distance for all bats in their community, despite the diversity of predator cues and the inability of moths to distinguish between sound frequencies, and b) the variability of evasive flight patterns, which makes it difficult for bats to predict prey movement, exists within or between moth species. Second, I will examine how mate-finding communication evolves from perceptual bias for environmental cues. We will use ancestral state reconstruction to test two hypotheses for the origin of an acoustic-vibrational duet in Lebinthini crickets, either an acoustic startle response to bat calls or vibrational courtship signals (a). In addition, we will test hypotheses about the Lebinthini communication system related to b) signal evolution, with the prediction that signals are more detectable, recognizable and informative compared to precursor behaviours, and c) the evolution of high frequency calling in this cricket clade. Third, I will investigate factors influencing the use of communication signals that are conspicuous to prey. Using an acoustic camera to identify individual bats producing social calls in flight, we will test if social calls are highly conspicuous to eared moths and if bats reduce social call production in a foraging context. Given the dire conservation status of many bats in North America, understanding of the contexts in which these social signals are produced could also provide enormous conservation benefits when paired with bioacoustic monitoring. Together, these three areas of research will have significant positive impacts in the field of sensory ecology and for the training of HQP for future careers in science.