Cool New Paper: Moth Hearing

The most dangerous thing to a nocturnal insect isn’t flying into a tree, it’s bats. Many bats (most? Batologists, give me an estimate please!) are insectivorous, using their ultrasonic calls (above 20 kHz) to detect anything that flies. In response, there has been a sort of coevolution going on between nocturnal insects and insectivorous bats, with the insects developing hearing systems capable of perceiving bat calls; members of the Coleoptera, Dictyoptera, Neuroptera, Orthoptera and Lepidoptera have all convergently evolved these systems (Fullard & Yack, 1993). It’s the latter that we’re interested in in this post: the moths.