The interactions of insectivorous bats and their prey can be thought of as an evolutionary arms race. Bats began the race with the evolution of sophisticated, high pitched sonar with which they track insects through space. Many nocturnal insects including moths countered with the evolution of sonar detection devices, ears, that alert insects to the echolocation cries of approaching bats. Moths take evasive action and an impressive aerobatic dog fight between predator and prey ensues. Tiger moths (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) have added a new twist to the fray. Tiger moths answer bats with a series of high frequency clicks produced by paired thoracic structures called tymbals. Recent research has shown tiger moths send out an acoustic warning that they are not palatable food items, much as insects use bright colors to warn visual predators that they are noxious. The bats quickly learn that clicking moths taste bad. This study will focus on additional complexities of the bat-moth interaction. The first is the possible evolution of Batesian mimics, species that cheat the system by producing warning sounds in the absence of chemical defenses to back them up. The second is the evolution of Mullerian mimics, distasteful sound-producing species that share in the burden of educating local predators by sounding alike. These possibilities will be tested using novel learning methods developed with lab-raised naive red bats and tiger moths chosen to represent different levels of sound production and palatability. This work will expand the current usage of the concept of mimicry from classic visual signals to include the acoustic realm. The study will also investigate whether certain moth species, those that produce extraordinarily complex sounds, can jam the sonar of bats much as military aircraft jam enemy radar. The bat-moth story has shaped the field of animal behavior and it is one of the most sophisticated predator-prey interactions known. An understanding of these processes will not only explain the fascinating details of bat-tiger moth evolution, it will also illustrate how fundamental behavioral interactions have shaped the acoustic world. In addition to the training of high quality graduate students and undergraduates in the field of animal behavior the results of these experiments will be shared with grade school children through a cooperative program with the Archbold Biological Station in south-central Florida. Undergraduates from Wake Forest will serve as liaisons to the summer ecology camp held at Archbold for 3rd, 4th. and 5th. graders. The undergraduates will teach hypothesis testing to the summer campers using our bat-moth system as an example. A website dedicated to the interactions of Bats and Bugs has been developed to take advantage of the intrinsic appeal of both types of organisms to entice children to explore behavior, ecology and evolution.
